Don’t get me wrong. I love my body.

I have working eyes to see the beauty all around me. I can smell the sweet scent of my babies and I can feel their weight against me when I hold them in my two strong arms. I can walk these country roads and feel my muscles flexing and hear the cacophony of coyotes out my bedroom window each night. I’m smart and I’m disease-free and I am blessed, no doubt.

But I weigh 207 pounds.

I know what Harriet would say. Harriet would say there should be no “but” before that statement, and not just because she’s an editor. Harriet, along with all the other feminist voices in my crowded head, would say my weight should in no way define me. I am a strong, successful, otherwise happy woman and I should see myself as completely beautiful, no buts about it. I certainly shouldn’t be blogging about the number on the scale.

Yet, here I am. Telling my entire listening audience that I weigh 207 pounds. Even worse, I told my husband. Like, I just spit it out the other night. Lying in bed. Talking about Gretta’s overnight plans and the ridiculous thing Emma said that morning. Like, “Hey we’re out of milk and did you mail those bills and by the way, I weigh 207 pounds.” (MY GOD, what would Cosmo say? Admitting your true weight to your husband while lying in bed was most definitely not on that “Top 10 Ways to Drive Him Wild” list.)

I think I was trying to make something happen by telling him, and I think I’m trying to make something happen here with this blog entry. To set something into motion. I mean, what else could it be? Why on earth am I telling you this? I think it’s some sort of bizarre self-preservation thing. I’m mature enough and experienced enough to know how dangerous it can be for me, this singular focus on my weight, so I can’t let anything be a secret. I can’t go back to that place where I hide things and lie and be a different person in public than I am in private.

I think I eat a relatively healthy diet, at least compared to the other shopping carts I see at Kalscheur’s, and maybe I drink too much wine but I’ve been going to the gym each morning with Katie and I’ve been paying attention to it, really. And I thought I was on to something last month when I had that epiphany, the one where I realized I haven’t been thin since my marriage was in such trouble, and before that I hadn’t been thin since that Year of Anorexia, and that (ding ding ding!) I probably associate being thin with being really unhappy. And I guess I thought just knowing that, just acknowledging it and really feeling it, would make the pounds magically melt away. Because that’s what Oprah would say. And because God knows nothing else is working, and there must be something Larger going on here, something blocking my progress….

But it didn’t. So I’m left here, still, wondering. Blogging. And I’m thinking this is the final step. Step 1423: Tell the world how much you really weigh. Be honest.

And then I weight. I mean WAIT. (God, I honestly didn’t mean to type that. Talk about a Freudian slip.) I wait for the pounds to magically melt away. What’s stopping them?