Today, I started back on a journey towards health. Over the course of wedding planning and honeymooning, I gained back a substantial portion of what I had lost the year before. I'm now sitting uncomfortably back at 165#, which sets my body dysmorphic disorder on a sharp, downward spiral. I am convinced that my backside is 20 feet wide, that my jiggling arms could create a tsunami... all completely unrealistic things that my brain convinces me are encyclopedic truth.

I set all that aside today and I ran. I didn't run fast, I didn't run far, but I ran. It felt great. I was hot and sweaty, but I was doing something positive for my body for the first time in a long time. I know it's a process, but it's a process that I am fully ready for.

The one thing I have a hard time with is justifying my desire to lose weight with my feminism. It's difficult to really suss out my reasons... am I brainwashed by society to think that I'm not attractive or worth anything if I don't fit into a certain size jeans? Is it really about wanting to be happier for myself? Although I can say that I would feel better having lost 20#, I know from experience that I wasn't very happy even when I weighed 107# in high school (with an eating disorder).

I've always been happy to be a mold breaker and I would have hoped that getting older and gaining maturity would have help continue that pattern into my 30s. I've found that now I just get stuck in different molds - career, job, credit score...

But, for now, I'm going to throw myself into running. I'm going to focus on doing what I can to make myself feel better for me.