Creativity at Work

I read a post on Facebook where someone shared a recipe for diet pop cupcakes.  Apparently it's easy, just mix diet pop with cake mix and voila, supposedly delicious low calorie cupcakes.  Of course by doing so, said person opened herself up to the vultures that are the "this is my way to lose weight and it is the one true path" crowd.  I hate those people.  Seriously.  Yes, we know that diet pop contains aspartame.  Yes we know that aspartame causes cancer in lab rats.  Did you know that we're NOT lab rats?  Guess what, Cupcakes, something is going to kill us.  When we're obese, we're told that it's going to kill us.  (Insert big announcer voice here:) We're going to get Diabetes or High Blood Pressure or Corn Dog Syndrome!  No, I'm not sure what Corn Dog Syndrome is, but I'm sure we'll hear about it soon. But then, we take the steps to lose weight.  We make the changes.  And for some of us, those changes look different than for others. 

So, I did it.  In January, I followed millions of people by making the resolution that I was going to finally lose weight.  Okay, I actually did it at the end of January so that it wouldn't be a resolution and I would actually stick to it.  And actually, it didn't come about with the notion of losing a big amount of weight.  I'd tried that in the past and it never worked for long.  The following is my story of how my journey began and where I stand to date. I've struggled with my weight since puberty.  It's just been something that's been a part of me.  I've always been taller and fatter than most of the people around me.  And then I went to college and put on more weight.  I got married and added a few more pounds; had 2 kids and added more weight.  I was so busy taking care of everyone else so that I couldn't take care of myself.  I see now that my weight has always served 2 purposes for me.  It's been a way for me to self-sabotage as well as ser