I had this revelation on the final morning of FitBloggin’ ….

No one tried to save me, or sell themselves to me.

For those who just met me at FitBloggin’ that is a GOOD thing. A very good thing. And a rather refreshing feeling as compared to what I typically experience at least once at other conferences. This is not a negative reflection on the other conferences I attend. I very much enjoy attending and support the work of the organizations. Sadly, it’s the few attendees who are fellow weight loss surgery patients who have good intentions but cannot seem to accept that I accept myself and my weight that put a slight damper on the overall experience.

This being my first FitBloggin’ and not having interacted with many attendees prior to the weekend I wasn’t sure how I would “fit” in at FibBloggin’. I had met my roommate, Nikki from Bariatric Foodie, at a conference last year and communicated often online. This was her third FitBloggin’ so I knew I would make connections via her. I also easily made connections on my own and found a very warm and welcoming group of new friends.

There were people at various stages of their journey, various levels of fitness, and of various types of fitness and nutrition regiments. The refreshing part was the sense that despite the differences everyone was comfortable with themselves at where they were and supporting each other in making changes they wanted.

The focus was fitness and health, not weight. People were focused on achieving goals as a priority and for those who also had a goal to lose weight, they weren’t waiting for some magic number on the scale to appear in order to consider themselves successful, or to achieve what they set out to accomplish.

My Diet Mt. Dew was not referred to as contraband and I was never asked “oh can you eat that?” I never felt as if what I was doing (being myself) was “bad” and the only time I explained myself or my weight was during my Ignite Fitness presentation, which the purpose was to spread awareness about Lipedema and Lymphedema. When I got off the stage after my Ignite, my Twitter feed blew up with comments from fellow attendees, it was an awesome warm and fuzzy moment.

Even more awesome was Roni mentioning the possibility of me leading a water aerobics class next year in Denver! Of course, that requires me achieving my current goal of becoming a certified water fitness instructor, already confirmed the hotel has a pool, last but not least…I have to make sure my graduation from graduate school doesn’t occur that same weekend!