I have a confession to make.

I am plump.

I am okay with it.

I work out 3-4 times EVERY week.  Without fail.  That just seems to be my routine.  Knowing that, you might think…….wow, she works out 3-4 times every week.  I bet she is svelte, thin, healthy, looks great in a swimsuit, or some other wonderful compliment…..  Well, for those of you who don’t know me, NOTHING could be further from the truth, and for those of you who do know me, it is probably a shocker that I work out so much and am still so…. (well, lets just keep it real)…….so pudgy.  I know, I know……I am a pudgy lady  Sometimes to make myself feel better I say “thick”, or “fluffy”, or “voluptuous”, but the truth is I am just plump.

I read an amazing post about just this very thing this week about being a Plus Sized Princess.   It is an amazing post and a wonderful concept.  I applaud CeCe for writing this post and she really made me think!! While I don’t have PCOS, I have struggled with my weight forever it seems.

This is a battle I have been fighting my ENTIRE life.  I kid you not.  I am going to tell you my diet saga.  If any of these diets apply to you, just keep track, make a little tic on a piece of paper, we can compare notes later.  When I was a teenager I was not plump, but I wanted to be more slender.  My mother was always doing weight watchers, and she would help me plan weight watchers meals.  Anyone else ever have those oh so lovely weight watchers “tuna pizza on a english muffin”?  Or how about tuna with melba toast?  Okay, so then when I was a young adult I lived on salad and went to the gym every day for an hour. Not only did I want to be slender, but I was in the Navy and had to maintain weight standards.  And let me tell you, Navy weight standards are NOT made for girls with an hourglass shape.  They are made for girls with small hips, more of a “boyish”, or “athletic”  shape .

Now don’t get me wrong, in my 20’s I was a hot mama, and turned heads, I had an hourglass figure that could stop traffic…and maintained Navy weight standards……..but at what cost?  I ate so poorly and worked out for an hour 6 days a week.  I was obsessed with weight loss.

Move on to other diets I have tried…(get your pencil and paper ready)…..cabbage soup diet, Jenny Craig, Scarsdale diet, Atkins diet (I did this one before it was “in” so the food tasted like cardboard and was very expensive), the Zone diet, the citrus fruit diet, the “eat all you want of one kind of food” diet, the Mediterranean diet, and others I have simply forgotten about.  Some of them worked, for awhile, but I got tired of always restricting and counting and being SOOOO careful!  In those years I got married, had two babies, got divorced, moved many times, had many various life changing events, and just couldn’t keep up with each diet.

Four years ago my younger brother Brian died of a massive heart attack.  He had been overweight for many years, and had high blood pressure and diabetes, and coronary heart disease.  My father died on Christmas Day 2010.  He was 70.  When he died, he was older than any other male in his family for at least 5 generations.  He had a great healthy heart, he took care of himself.  For him it was a stroke that killed him.  But because there were so many heart attacks in his family particularly with the males, he was very careful with his health, especially his cardiac health.

After Brian died, I decided it really was time to make sure my heart was healthy.  So I joined a gym and started going 3-4 times every week. I hoped I would lose weight while getting my body healthy, but alas, that was not to be. However, on the positive side, my heart is healthy.  My cholesterol is good, my blood pressure is good, and my sugar is good.  So, I may be plump, but I am a damn healthy plump woman.  I have been doing Weight Watchers for about 6 months.  I eat foods in moderation. I eat vegetables, meats, fruits, and yes sweets.

So my point to all of this is that in my opinion it is okay to be a healthy plump person.  I would rather have a healthy heart and be plump than be skinny and have an unhealthy heart.

Thank goodness Bluebell agrees.