I love fresh flowers – the scent, the beauty, the happiness I feel when I walk into a room and see them. They have always seemed reserved for women in relationships, flowers appearing at the office on holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. As a perpetually single gal, the only time I had received flowers was when my mom sent them. One day, while pushing my cart through Whole Foods, I was passing the floral department and stopped, literally, to smell the flowers. Then it occurred to me… why not? I’d had a great week the week before – lost a few pounds, eaten healthy and hit the gym right on schedule – why shouldn’t I get some flowers? Thus began a new tradition.

I certainly didn’t come up with the concept of rewarding myself for my success; however, I am a big supporter of the idea. Some would argue that weight loss, increased fitness, improved health are all their own rewards and those people would be right. Personally, I feel adding more tangible “lagniappe” takes nothing away from one’s achievements. If your child studies all week and aces a difficult algebra test, you could argue that excelling in mathematics is its own reward when it serves them later in life. Or, you could reward your child with additional praise and perhaps a treat. Which is more likely to encourage your child when it comes time for the next test? We are all just big children at heart and the actual still feels more real than the abstract notion of future wellbeing. I work very hard to keep on track, avoid temptation and put myself first – I certainly deserve to treat myself with love and encouragement, to celebrate my victories. And so, I buy myself flowers.

The specific milestones and efforts you choose to reward are totally up to you. I reward myself for two types of accomplishments. First is simply small, inexpensive somethin’-somethin’ that brings me joy at the end of a good week of hard work and dedication. This is when I would buy affordable grocery store flowers or, another favorite of mine, Lush brand bubble bars to add to my weekly recovery Epsom soak. Manicures, pedicures and spa days are great little indulgences to make you feel special after doing so many great things for your body. Maybe downloading new music to power your workouts is the best treat for you. Perhaps taking yourself out to the movies (but skip the snack bar!) is just what you need to honor your achievement. The one thing I never recommend is rewarding yourself with food. Cupcakes are delicious but most likely counter-productive to achieving goals. Furthermore, a huge part of having success in a healthy lifestyle change is divorcing oneself from food motivation thought patterns.

My second reward comes after achieving a bigger pre-set goal. I love setting short term, challenging but achievable goals along the path to my ultimate goal – examples of my short term goals have been training for a 10k, fitting into a too-small blouse and meeting a certain weight goal by a certain event or date. For meeting these bigger goals, the rewards are a bit bigger as well, but they are also geared towards further encouraging my new lifestyle. This is when I treat myself to new workout clothes, a great new vegan cookbook or training equipment. My most recent goal and reward was fulfilling the promise I made to myself that when I reached my lowest adult weight I would treat myself to personal training sessions and reinvigorate and revive my workout routine.

For some reason, we seem to live in a world that wants our successes to go unnoticed. So afraid of appearing immodest or being accused of flaunting our triumphs, we let them pass quietly and obscurely. We treat the truly remarkable as unremarkable and pedestrian. We think we should just be happy with doing well and not seek to celebrate that. We don’t “toot our own horn.” Personally, I think that is absurd. By all means, celebrate! We are amazing people, doing amazing things – we are doing things we probably thought unimaginable at one point in our lives. Enjoy the process, by all means, but feel free to honor your progress with experiences and tokens that bring you joy and remind you of just how awesome you are and how far you have come.

An interesting aspect of my personal story is that there are two groups of people in my life: people who knew me when I was at my heaviest and people who only met me after I lost weight. The former are often impressed by the transformation, find me a bit unrecognizable and can’t believe how much weight I’ve lost. The latter tend to be a bit astounded upon seeing old photographs of me and can’t believe I was ever so heavy. However, there is a third perspective to consider: mine.

On an intellectual and purely practical level, of course I know I’ve lost weight. I have donated countless clothing items when they no longer fit my shrinking frame. I am aware of how much easier physical activities are now compared to before. While I have not yet met my weight loss goal, I absolutely can acknowledge that I have lost a significant amount of weight. But I don’t feel any different on the inside. On the inside, I am still a fat girl.

Being an overweight person and experiencing life as such went a long way in forming my identity. So intricately entwined with my personality and reality was obesity that, in many ways, being fat was my identity. Ask someone what he/she “is”, they may answer with a profession, they may answer with an ethnicity, they may answer with a gender. Ask me what I am, and the answer is “fat.” So what is the fat girl mentality? My fat girl persona is the funny, cool, laid back, the perpetually friend-zoned girl men want to hang out with until they meet the woman they want to date. In short, it is the girl whose wonderful internal qualities exceed her perceived outwardly shortcomings. I am self-deprecating, quick to deflect insults by making myself the butt of the joke. I feel lumbering, awkward and uncoordinated. I view compliments as highly suspicious and probably disingenuous. I see a department store as a potential minefield. I have no mirrors in my house apart from the one installed over the bathroom sink and, in it, I look at only parts and pieces as necessary (is my mascara all over my eyelid? Is my hair ok? My teeth clean?) and not the whole. Regardless of changes in my size and physical abilities, this remains my complicated and, at times, painful internal life. While everyone around me sees a person changed, I see myself as the same – a fat girl, albeit a fat girl in a slimmer girl costume, masquerading as something I am not.

Will this change? Will I leave the fat girl behind as I continue to progress and, eventually, meet my goals? Will I become confident in my appearance, will I feel graceful or elegant? Or is the fat girl someone I should fight to hang on to? She has an endless capacity for compassion, seeing her own struggle in those of all who are ridiculed, judged and dismissed for trivial and superficial reasons. She has zero tolerance for body shaming, fat bashing and making fun of others. She understands that people aren’t fat because they are lazy, they aren’t fat because they have no self-esteem, nor are they fat because they have an Oreo cookie dispenser in the dashboards of their cars. She is not of her physical self, but of her emotional, mental and spiritual self. Is the fat girl inside, in fact, the reward for having persisted despite truly foul treatment on the parts of others? I do, in all honesty, believe I am a better person for having lived this particular life and learned these lessons. Perhaps being forever the fat girl is, in fact, a blessing.

Lost: Ten thousand feelings of having given up on quality of life; despair; self-judgment and self-hatred; hypertension, gastroesophageal reflux disease and sleep apnea; size 24 pants; sitting on the sidelines; crash diets; seat belt extensions on airplanes; more than 100 pounds (and counting).

Found: Empathy for myself and others; balance; compassion; fitness and athleticism; the finish line of the Crescent City Classic (four times); knowledge; the ability to shop for clothes in nearly any store I choose; a passion for wellness; a desire to pay forward all the support I’ve received; me: the person I was always meant to become but was stifled by both perceived and actual limitations.

Welcome to Jody: Lost & Found. I am a forty year-old Northern California native and seven-year resident of New Orleans. I began my journey – or this journey, as each of our lives have a myriad of journeys within a single lifetime – at just under 290 pounds. I began with the singular goal of losing weight; but, over time and as I progressed, that goal evolved into one of complete overall wellness. I am devoted to physical, mental and spiritual wellness through a healthy, whole foods plant-based diet, abundant and diverse physical activity and daily meditation. I am dedicated to practicing constant mindfulness and compassion for myself, my fellow living creatures and my planet for the best possible overall health. I am not a licensed or registered nutritionist or dietician; nor, am I a certified personal trainer. I am simply a woman with a voracious appetite for information regarding health, fitness and nutrition tempered with a strong sense of pragmatism.

I started this blog for my readers as well as for myself. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who have inspired and motivated me throughout my odyssey – it would have been impossible without them. From that gratitude springs an overwhelming desire to pay it forward, to perhaps encourage people who want to begin or continue their own quests to become the best, most authentic versions of themselves, whatever that may be. Additionally, I suspect the process of blogging (journaling in a very candid, very public way) will be a cathartic one. I hope this blog helps me to gain insight into my own motivations, successes and setbacks and stay connected with and focused on the process. Lastly, I feel there is also something invaluable about documenting this all for the future me and for posterity.

This blog will be an accumulation of stories from both the past – as readers are joining me two-thirds of the way through my journey there is much to tell from pound one through one hundred – and present. I will offer lessons learned, insights, tips and advice. I will share my hopes and ambitions for the future. I will post recipes and meal plans, photos and milestones. Also, I welcome and encourage reader interaction as I would love to dedicate blog entries to answering any questions my readers may have and addressing any feedback. With that, I invite you to follow my blog or bookmark this page and check back weekly for Jody: Lost & Found.