Gotta Love Those Non-Scale Victories!

My, oh my, how I feared armed chairs. No, not chairs with guns but rather chairs that have arms. As a morbidly obese woman who carried a great deal of weight in the hips, thighs and bum, every time I encountered a situation that involved sitting down, I immediately and with a great deal of trepidation checked out the actual seats. If they had arms, if they were situated close together, if they were plastic or if they were old, I panicked. At my absolute heaviest, booths become a problem as well.

In my larger days, I had a few embarrassing situations that involved seating. I once broke the leg of my parent's plastic lawn chair. Luckily no one was home and I slunk away with nary a word to them and I've often wonder if someone later tried sitting in it and found themselves rolling in the grass after the leg gave out, embarrassed with the belief they were the one who broke it. I've murdered two toilet seats, both in our brand new house. No one other than my husband knew about it, but just him knowing was bad enough. Both my brother and my in-laws have arms on their kitchen chairs and during family meals, I had to sit on the very edge of the chair because I was physically unable to squish my rump between the arms. At my former hair salon, the shampoo chairs had arms and while I was able to squeeze into them, I had to fight to stand back up. My hair dresser once laughed at my struggles, hence the "former" status. Plane trips were always "fun," but one was particularly horrendous. I spent the entire two hour fight in tears as the corner of the metal arm bit into my leg, leaving huge bruises that lasted for weeks. I was too embarrassed to ask the cute young man next to me if I could lift the armrest so that my fat thighs could expand into his space.

There are other examples, but those are the ones that really stick out in my mind. Every time I experienced an embarrassing situation, I vowed to change my ways, to lose weight so that I would never feel that way again. Of course, each time I failed to keep that promise and my fear of normally innocuous chairs continued to grow.

To this very day, I still get that fluttery panicked feeling when I walk into a room and see seating that wouldn't have accommodated my 320 pound body. It's so ingrained in me that I don't know if I'll ever have a normal reaction when presented with seating that belonged to my "to be avoided" category. However, there is hope. After the initial feeling passes, I now find myself plopping down in said chairs with nary a care in the world. While that flash of fear is still disturbing, the relief of realizing it's no longer a concern is...wonderful...and liberating. Quite honestly, it's one of my favorite non-scale victories to date.