Halloween was always my favorite holiday of the year but I was always so bummed that I never felt comfortable wearing costumes because I could never find ones that would fit right and I wanted to be cute or funny characters and get all into dressing up. I used to visualize myself walking into a party as my regular obese self. All eyes were on me when I walked into the room and then I would smile and unzipped my entire outfit and revealed my true smaller self and everyone would gasp. I know it might seem silly but I used to wish that this body was all just a dream and I really could unzip and reveal my real body that I always envisioned.
There was another meaning behind the book title. Unzipping is an act that is done right before something vulnerable happens. We unzip to remove clothing, we unzip to use the restroom, we unzip before we are intimate with someone.
When I wrote this book, I wanted to be honest with as many experiences as I could. Even though it is often softened with humor, some of these stories are very personal and intimate and wanted to be as real as possible.
When it came to the book cover, I had an "idea" of what I wanted and wasn't sure if it would be able to come out as it did in my head. I wanted to keep with the theme of the zipper visual I had all those years and am so grateful for my graphic designer who went above and beyond to bring my visual to life!
I wanted colors to be easy on the eyes and calming and not too distracting from the image. I loved the idea of the ocean because weight loss is similar to the ocean in regards to the ebbs and flows of the tides and the ebbs and flows of weight loss. The rocks represent the rocky times in my life and the waves crashing is the culmination of success.
The road to this moment has been rocky at times and mirrored to the tides and yet I wouldn't change any of it for the world.
There's also a little Easter egg in the Table of Contents :)