Hurting and changing

The room vibrates with sound, electrifying the sweating bodies moving against each other. Our Saturday night DJ was a skilled professional, building the energy of the dance floor and making me move my body. For over an hour, my friend and I stomped, swayed, and gyrated to the club's music. We weren't ready for the night to be done when the DJ announced it was the last song, yet we shuffled out with the other sweat-drenched partiers. Walking home on the warm summer night, the breeze cooled us as we talked about what good fun and exercise it had been.

At 29, I finally have the nightlife experiences I've always dreamed of. Late night adventures have always held my fascination. I love to dance, and I love to have fun, but dance clubs were always outside my reach as a regular experience. As a sober young adult who was scared of risk, I had no companion to accompany me. So, I relish these nights of dancing debauchery (even though I now no longer do it sober).

Yet, one must always face the next day, and the next morning, slightly hungover, I woke up to find my knees were not the same as they had been the day before. They were swollen and painful. I spent the day trying to avoid all inclines, which is hard to do when your home is on the second floor and includes an interior staircase. Getting up from chairs was painful. Going up the curb was painful. Sitting down was painful. Climbing into bed was painful. It was a day where I worried about my morbidity. Less than 30, I was already experiencing the pain I associated with my 90 year old grandparents.

This summer I weigh more than I have before. At 281 pounds, I should lose over 130 pounds to be in the "healthy" BMI range. It feels impossible and necessary. For a year I have counted every calorie, and slowly weighed more and more. For a year, I have meditated on my desire to lose weight, and all that has changed is that I now track every single thing I eat, even as I eat too much and judge my portions poorly.

This year has also been the hardest of my adult life. My children have unraveled, I survived a hard year of teaching, we mourned the death of my father-in-law, we remodeled our home from a dilapidated place missing windows and floorboards to a messy home that was only slightly safer, and we bought and sold and bought houses and moved to a totally new city, living between two places before we could truly settle somewhere new.

And so I keep trying. My weight loss goal doesn't begin and end with a number - either on the scale or inside my clothes. It begins with chasing my children at the park and long nights dancing, and it ends with my beautiful wife - healthy and living together into our old age. Something has to change.

So, today I went to the gym for the first time in months. I googled healthy recipes. I went shopping.

Something has to change. So I made a change today. Hopefully, tomorrow will be even better.