I've been putting off writing my one year post for two months now. Largely, I've just been busy, but also, I have no clue how to put my thoughts to paper.
I went through over 30 years of ups and downs related to my weight, never truly understanding how to make the changes I needed to make in order to become my true self. And then in one instant I flipped a switch that set me on a journey, a year of which has brought me to where I am today, 145 pounds down, happy, healthy, fulfilled. I’ve talked a lot about this journey, and quite a bit about where I was just prior to making the lifestyle transformation, but I haven’t talked much about my deeper past and I think it’s time to do that.
I don’t remember being a “normal” weight. When I was a child, I used to look at pictures of me when I was a toddler, and I’d think a lot about how that was when I was last a “normal” weight. I remember being overweight even in Kindergarten, how the struggles started way back then. I was fortunate to grow up with a lot of close friends, never dealt with being a loner, and was pretty outgoing. Now, as any overweight child does, I went through my share of bullying and teasing, but it wasn’t as awful as it could have been, since I had a great network of friends around me. I yo-yo dieted a lot throughout childhood with my mother who was also overweight at the time. I remember being of an age that I shouldn’t have to worry about anything but running around outside and playing and instead sitting in an office staring at a physical representation of a pound of fat, being talked to about lean meats, ounces of protein, and exercise. I remember weigh-ins, measurements, lectures from pediatricians. Now would be the time that I could talk about how my upbringing played a role, but I don’t think anything good would come from stirring up any feelings related to that. I had an extremely loving home and parents who meant well, who cried with me when I cried about my weight, but who could not, unfortunately, help me achieve health, or didn’t stop me from becoming unhealthy in the first place. And once you’re down that road, it is a hard, hard one to get off of.
I was in 7th grade when someone called me obese and I thought they had called me a beast. My grandmother understood the mix up and explained the word obese to me. I had been protected from it up until that point. I dreaded the physical fitness tests where I would be ridiculed in front of my peers, reduced to what I simply could not physically accomplish, punished openly for my weight, something that was literally beyond my control at that age. There are a lot of memories I can drag out into the open about being name called, about unrequited puppy love, about being taunted even by my own siblings, but I’d rather focus on what the process as a whole was like. In high school I worried about getting the right life jacket to go out on the water because there was only one that fit me right. I wanted to be a part of the sailing team and ended up in the chase boat instead of on the spritely little racing boats, horrified by the one experience where I attempted to right a turned JY. And this is where Kevin came into my life. He saw me as a strong and confident girl, as someone full of life who had freedom and love to offer him. I don’t know what this lifelong journey would look like without him, but he is inextricable from who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I’m going.
And so with love, I had a leg up in the world, I think. But college was the most challenging part of my life in regards to weight and body image. I mentioned how minimal the bullying and name calling had been in my youth, and how I was always surrounded by friends, well, college opened up a new and unexpected door to harassment. I gained a lot of weight, immediately, after starting college. They talked about the freshman 15, but I was gaining the freshman 50 plus. People would shout at me from their cars as they passed me walking on the sidewalk. I struggled with walking around campus and began to struggle to fit into the desk/chair combos that were in most lecture halls. I had to scope out a lecture hall before I started a class there and make sure a free standing chair existed, and once, I had to request that one be added to the room.
My embarrassment was painful, as was any physical activity.
I weighed over 400 pounds when I decided I had had enough. Just before graduating I turned a new page and began losing weight. I lost one hundred pounds in about a year, and then, even though I had so much farther to go, I stopped. And I failed. Over the years that ensued, during which Kevin and I solidified who we are as adults in this world, lived in two apartments, bought a house, I worked teaching high school in two different schools, Kevin finished college and got a job, I got pregnant with our first child. So much happened in those years, and my weight fluctuated some, my lowest being after Eleanor was born, at which point I weighed under 300 pounds. With my pregnancy with Desmond I gained weight and then after he was born things got out of control.
It is hard to explain this process. I want people to know I’ve always been happy, that I’ve been fortunate with love, but that I was becoming lost in my own body. I’ve talked a lot before about the moment I stepped into this lifestyle change, so I won’t go over that yet again, suffice to say I was fed up, I wanted to be me, I wanted to see me in my own face, I wanted to do the things I yearned to do, and I committed mentally in a way I hadn’t done before. This wasn’t another yo-yo diet. This wasn’t a plan regarding restricting calories. This wasn’t about deprivation. This was about being healthy. I haven’t tracked a single calorie over the past year. I never intended to because this was going to be a lifestyle change. I was simply going to eat what was healthy for me to eat, indulge when I wanted to, in moderation, and exercise my body.
For so many years I knew who I was inside but I could never be her on the outside. As if the judgment, the stares, the whispers, worrying about fitting into restaurant booths, not being able to visit theme parks, being ashamed in a bathing suit, being mistreated by doctors and thus not ever seeking medical care, the physical struggles, the mental struggles, and all of the other things that come along with being morbidly obese weren’t enough, I think the hardest thing was knowing who I was and not being able to simply be that person. When I made the mental commitment to this lifestyle change it was because I was sick and tired of not getting to do the things I wanted to do and live the life I wanted to live. I don’t know why it took so long to find a way off the path I was on. I don’t know why, despite how badly I wanted to be me, how badly I wanted to be healthy, how badly I wanted to be comfortable in my own skin, how badly I wanted to see me in my own face, why I couldn’t manage making the mental commitment required to set off on a different road. But once my mind was made up, it was made up. This time, as I’ve said before, was so different than any other time. And as I began losing weight, and I began to feel more and more like the true me, I was hooked. How could I have spent so much time not getting to be my true self? I struggled so much with that question and sometimes still do. I wish I had set myself free sooner. I regret the lost years, all that time I could have been entirely myself but wasn’t. I try to remind myself there is no point living in the past and at least I’ve made the changes I needed to make and I continue on this journey of self discovery and improvement with great happiness that I am doing it, that I am me.
So over one year out, down 145 pounds from the start of my lifestyle change, over 200 from my highest weight ever, what have I learned?
I have learned to listen to my body. It took a long time to work out the balancing act regarding fueling my body while still enjoying food. It took a long time for my mentality about food to completely, entirely change, but I’m here now. Please see my post about becoming vegetarian for more on this, but basically my relationship with food gradually changed as I forged onwards with a new way of eating, exercising, and living. Balance is key. I don’t use triggering diet phrases like cheat meals/cheat days/cheating in general, or good/bad foods. I simply do what feels right for my body and sometimes I crave something and realize it isn’t worth putting into my body and I refrain, and sometimes I crave something and I decide to have it. I call it indulging. Finding balance and truly understanding moderation has been a key to my success. And I’ll repeat, it takes time. I didn’t think a palette could change, but it truly does. You can learn to love new and different foods and completely new ways of eating.
I have learned to love moving my body. If you’re setting out on this journey and you feel like you hate the gym, you feel like you’re lazy and despise exercise, I want to tell you not to stress about that right from the start. Focus on listening to your body and learning about food. Be patient with yourself as your nutrition changes and you adjust to it. Lose some weight and get to a place where you feel in your soul it is time to move your body more. I promise it will come. I knew it would come but still for months wasn’t sure when it would come or how it would feel. And then there it was. I knew I was ready to become more active.
I started upping my game in regards to the one thing I’ve always loved, hiking. Then I joined a gym and learned I love group classes. Then I learned I love, love, love yoga. Then I realized I was finally in a place where I felt comfortable trying climbing, something I never thought I would be able to do. And let me tell you what, I am in love with climbing. As of now, I don’t like to go a day without being active for at least a half hour, if not an hour or two, or often more. Once I lost enough weight to be comfortable moving my body I was able to find the activities I am passionate about. Hiking, yoga, rock climbing, these things might not be for you, but I promise you can find some kind of activity that gives you life. I also enjoy dancing, biking, and swimming, and hope to increase my winter sports next winter, upping my game with more snow shoeing, skiing, and ice climbing. There are so many different things to try and as I’ve learned to move my body, as I’ve fallen in love with moving my body, it has become an integral part of my lifestyle.
I have learned to be grateful for and gracious, patient, and loving towards my body. This is not to say there haven’t been bumps in the road, or that I don’t still struggle with body image (hello excess skin), but I have learned to appreciate what my body can do and to look at its imperfections with an honest eye, knowing where this body has come from and where it is going. It feels amazing when my muscles are pumped from climbing but I want so badly to reach that hold and somehow I can muster the strength to push harder than I could have just weeks ago.
I stop and smile because my body did that.
When I can get just a bit deeper in a yoga pose I stop and smile because my body did that. When I hike a challenging or long hike I smile because my body did that. I might currently be saddled with excess skin that weighs me down, interferes with my workouts, makes me look larger than I actually am. I might be struggling with self confidence sometimes because of this. But I am grateful for all this body has accomplished, I am patient as it is strengthened, as it has its ups and downs, and I am loving towards it always because it did this and now I get to push the limits of what it can do daily as I live my best life as my true self.
I have learned how to be the person I want my children to be. Even before I began this lifestyle change I was very careful about how I fed my children and how I encouraged them to be active. I was dead set on making sure I did not set them up to travel the same road I was on. But I knew how limited I was when I couldn’t set a good example. I was also limited in giving them ample opportunity to be as active as I wanted them to be since I couldn’t be active at such a high weight. I also felt like a hypocrite, feeding the family healthy meals for dinner, allowing more indulgent foods for them only occasionally, but then eating all the wrong things behind their backs, once they were in bed, or stopping for fast food just for myself, explaining to them that it was because they had their lunch at home and mommy didn’t eat yet. I wanted to be the person I wanted them to be.
I wanted to give them a solid example of the type of life they should strive to live. I wanted them to see what it meant to eat food that tastes good, but that is also good for the body. I wanted them to see what it looked like to know what moderation and balance looks like. I wanted them to see that you could find activities you are passionate about and that you could enjoy exercising your body immensely. I also wanted to share my love of our environment with them, knowing there was no better way than actually getting outside and being in that environment. Now they see their mother is active every single day. They see their mother going to the gym, working out, rolling her yoga mat out at home to work on her practice. They see their mother doing planks, squats, crunches in the living room. They come out on hikes with me, every week. They come to the climbing gym with us. They watch me working hard to get better at the activities that interest me. They see their mother eating healthy foods, but they also see their mother indulging from time to time. They don’t hear foods categorized as good or bad, but rather as foods we should eat sometimes, and foods that give our bodies energy. They see their mother embracing and loving herself, despite her flaws. I feel incredible about the path I am setting them on in life and know I couldn’t have done it so well, so confidently, so honestly, and to be such a part of it, had I not changed the way I live my life.
I have learned what value exists in truly being yourself, 100%.
I thought I knew. I think everyone thinks they know. Being able to fully be who I am inside is even more amazing than I had spent years, and years, and years dreaming it would be. If you’re stuck in your own body, struggling to breathe, struggling to find yourself when you look in the mirror, but painfully unable to make the changes you need to make to live fully as yourself, I want you to close your eyes right now and dream. Who are you inside? What would you be doing right now if you weren’t held back by your size? Where would you go? What every day things would you do differently? What adventures would you have? What activities do you think you might love? Now, listen, I know this seems impossible, but those dreams you have when you close your eyes? The future holds even more than what you can imagine. Reality can be even better than your dreams. I thought, when I sat on the couch eating my cookies but wishing I wouldn’t, watching Valley Uprising with Kevin, that I knew what it would feel like if I could climb some day. But I also thought I knew I wouldn’t climb some day. I thought I knew that. I thought I’d be a couch climber, mountaineer, hiker, my whole life, and I hated myself for it. But I also thought I knew, in my dreams, how it would feel if I was free. I had no clue.
Back then I thought it was unfair, I was sick of pacing back and forth behind bars, but I didn’t fully see how I was cheating myself from the joy of not just experiencing the things I wished I could experience, but from the joy of doing those things with my own body, from the joy of my own strength, from the joy of my own determination, from the absolute and complete ecstasy of achieving things you worked hard to achieve. I was cheating myself from the pleasure of discovery, self discovery, discovering what my body could do, discovering who I truly am, discovering what this earth has to offer, discovering endurance, discovering physical limitations and pushing them, and so much more. Nothing feels better than knowing exactly who I am and getting to be that person every single day. I wake up and choose to enjoy what my body can do instead of enjoying poor food choices and not moving. I’m not sure how I found that life fulfilling. While we liked to be out and about, visiting places and doing things, while we certainly enjoyed our time together, I struggle to picture how I could have been happy without the things that bring me such joy now.
