I know my enemies' names. Meet Fat and Clutter.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll do a lot of blogging about the things I fight the most these days. Fat and clutter.

Fat and clutter created a viscious cycle for me. The fatter I got, the lazier I got, the lazier I got, the more I gave into clutter. The more clutter there was the more I went to the freezer for a bowl of ice cream to distract myself from the pain of seeing the clutter (and to avoid doing something about it), and the more I visited the freezer and sought solace in a bowl of Blue Bell Ice Cream the fatter I got and the lazier I got the more I let clutter pile up...which, you might guess, sent me back to the freezer for another bowl of Blue Bell Ice Cream which made me fatter...lazier...clutter piling up...and on and on ad nauseum.

Fat
I am 5'1" tall. Last year at this time I weighed a solid 206 pounds. In other words, I was short and morbidly obese. In November, I began a lower calorie diet (which did NOT include Blue Bell) and I dropped to 192. From January (at 192) to June I lost another six pounds which brought me to 186. At that point I stalled on my weight loss and decided to switch over to a low carb diet. I began to follow the Atkins way of eating. Low carbing has brought me to the point I am at now, which is 166 pounds as of this morning. Forty pounds gone and a tremendous amount of energy returned, as well as a renewed sense of being in control of my life.

Being fat contributed to my lazy streak. It came on me so gradually that I did not realize how diabolical the extra weight was to my mental wellbeing, my physical wellbeing or my relationships.

I get into this more later and in more detail, but the bottom line and point I want to make about fat in this entry is that being fat exacerbated my inability to control clutter in my life. Until I took charge of the fat problem, clutter was winning the war.

Clutter
I don't know why clutter is such a huge problem to me. It engulfs me and makes me feel anxiety--my goodness, what if someone came over and saw this pile--no, strike that-- what if they saw the piles of crap in my house?

You see, when clutter is out of control for me, my home looks like a psycho lives in it. Trying to fight it entangles me in arguments with myself--can I throw this out? Will I need it? Get rid of it! No! You can't. (And, the fat me thinking: Decisions, decisions! I can't do this! This is too stressful. I should have a bowl of Blue Bell...maybe even run down to the convenience store and pick up a package of Vanilla Zingers to go with it. That will take me away from this clutter mess for awhile...after I am done with my ice cream I'll tackle it again. [Only, that never happens because I am too depressed that I ate all that sugar, my blood sugar crashes and I feel terrible so I watch television and surf the internet until something else catches my fancy...clutter wins...Willa loses.])

That's enough for now about Fat and Clutter. Have no fear that these will be favorite subjects for me in the future.