Pasta Queen (your name should be in a spelling bee, lady), a fellow blogger and hostel mate I met in Chicago last month at Blogher, just wrote this amazing post about the importance of remembering how it feels to be 300lbs.

Her book, Half of Me: The Last 200lbs are the Hardest, out April 2008, is about her painful but poignant two-year weight loss journey. Make sure to get it because she is a truly remarkable writer, as you can probably see from her blog.

Being on The Journey myself, I am not yet at a point where I can say, wow, I can now fit in a swing without looking up at the bolts. And that is perhaps my most sensible reason to lose weight.

It’s not about being able to shop at a regular store or fitting into an airplane seat. It’s about fitting into a ride at the county fair or go down the slide at the park with my girls without getting stuck.

It’s not about getting stick thin so I can get into my secondary school clothes again (no amount of money will make me get into those fluorescent yellow leotards). It’s just getting to my ideal weight so I can do things with my children without embarassing myself, embarassing them or damaging public property.

Although I won’t be able to reflect on memories of being fat for a while, I will feel good about myself now, because while boogying to Maroon 5 at Jazzercise this morning, I felt better than I had ever felt in the last five years. I was jumping, skipping, plié-ing and relevé-ing up a storm, energy and endorphins rushing through my veins. And like Eliza Doolittle triumphant over her vowels, I felt like I could’ve danced all day.