It was a turning point...

It was exactly five years ago this August that the lights went on for me.

I was at the beach, a place I’ve yet to lay eyes on this “summer” (the quotation marks are included, bitterly, for despondent Ontarians everywhere), in the company of my kids and parents. No doubt I was lounging on an oversized towel reading something trashy, a glorious beachside activity in which I’ve joyfully engaged since my teens.

And I was eating.

Hauling a bag of snacks down to the sand—along with my reading material, sunglasses, towel and sunscreen—used to be part of the ritual for me. I’d lie there for a bit, basking in the rays, wading through the sordid tales of Brangelina’s latest exploits, watching my children splash in the lake—and then I’d tear giddily into a bag of Doritos.

And so it was that revelation found me on this fateful day, with fingers stained orange and conscience stained guilty.

I had let myself go and I knew it. Indeed, I’d known it for some time, but had managed to avoid conceding same thanks to a strategic approach to mirrors and elastic waistbands.

But it was on this otherwise uneventful, sun-bleached day when I felt my mother’s eyes sweeping over my swimsuit-exposed self, taking in the sandblown, Doritios-dusted wreck her daughter had become, that I felt her know it, too. And that realization just about finished me.

Instead, I let it finish my bad habits.

Soon after our return from the cottage that summer—having negotiated the disappointment, shame and anger her suddenly pointed questions about my physical state inspired in me—I enrolled myself in a weight-loss program and started in on a running regimen. For the first real time in my life (I know, I know), I did the math and understood the connection between unhealthy behaviour and the way a person can feel sincerely crappy about herself. At long last, I drew a connection between engaging in good stuff and enjoying the physical rewards that come with it.

Of course in the time since those heady early days of heart-health concession, I’ve lapsed in and out of good behaviour wildly. There have been stretches, the longest being this past fall and early winter, when I’ve let the bad habits creep back in with a vengeance. The physical activity has waned. And the eating? Well, the eating has waxed.

But I’ve never toddled down to the beach with a bag of anything again, not after that glaring day in the company of all who loved me when my truth was revealed. Acknowledging what I’d let myself become as reflected in my mother’s astonished eyes was extraordinary for me.

It was a turning point on a sweep of sand when a light brighter than the sun was switched on for me—at long, long last.