I want to share part of my story of reclaiming my body and life. I am currently 40 years old, but my story starts late into my 36th year of life. It was a Saturday morning, I was tired, out of breath and frustrated, my own body was in my way, and was making a simple task such as cleaning my bathtub much harder than it needed to be. I don’t know why it was particularly upsetting this specific day, but it was. Something inside of me broke that morning. Weeping on the bathroom floor trying to catch my breath I decided enough was enough. I went from sad to mad in a heartbeat and stormed into my youngest daughters room where I knew there would be a pen and a piece of paper, I sat in the middle of my bed with this ratty spiral notebook and tried to think back to a time where I was happy with my body. I decided when I was 20 I was pretty pleased with how my body served me. So, I split the paper down the middle with a sharp line and wrote at the top 20 and 36. At this moment I just started writing down, to the best of my memory, what all my daily habits were at the age of 20 and in the 36 column I wrote down what I was doing that was different or the same. I knew that I had gotten to this point in my life by a slow change in how I was living day to day. I knew that it had happened so gradually that I never really noticed that it was happening at all, but I also knew I that I said a little prayer for the button on my work slacks every day that I put them on as he was being stretched to his limit too (I am just glad I hit my breaking point first).
There were some stark differences in my daily habits from
age 20 to age 36, When I was 20 I lived a very healthy lifestyle pretty
effortlessly because I was single and really just living for myself, I filled
my time with working out at the gym after work and coming home to eat salad out
of the bag on my sofa while watching trashy reality TV with my roommate, I
journaled daily and wrote emails and letters to friends and family often. 36
was a different story, at 36 I was rushing home after work every day, to go
home and make dinner that usually consisted of something very palatable so that
my children would eat it without complaint, my only friends were my husband and my beer, and
hadn’t kept a journal in years. Looking at the list I realized I had lost who I
was as I entered adulthood. I don’t think I am alone in that; I think that when
many women get married, they lose their way a bit, we sacrifice a small bit of
our identity to become a wife and then we do it again when we become mothers.
I learned several things on my journey to health, one of them being that life doesn’t often change in drastic ways it is a slow-moving system, but, if you aren’t intentional about life, it will get away from you in a hurry. I gained weight at a much slower rate than I lost it, even though losing 60 lbs. felt like the longest most frustrating journey of my life. Losing weight was an intentional thing gaining it was a carless event that I had denied for so many years, it is weird how the mirror tells us lies. Losing weight slowed down time because for the first time in my life I was living with intention, I was weighing myself everyday instead of a quick glance at the Dr. Office scale once a year. I was watching the clock and eating when I was hungry instead of eating when it was time, or because I was feeling gross feelings, I was known to be happy and carefree and losing weight brought out a dark side of me because I was forcing myself to walk through my feelings every day instead of shove them down with another supersized drive thru meal and a soda. I learned how to be honest with myself and with those around me about my true feelings. Those feelings weren’t always well received, but I learned that was ok. I wasn’t in charge of other people’s feelings, but was taking responsibility for mine for the first time in my life.
I used many tools for weightloss the main tool being intermitent fasting. Fasting was esential for me in my weight loss journey. Fasting healed my obsessive eating. It played a vital roll in teaching me how to deal with my emotions without food. Do I still emotionally eat.. yes sometimes I do, but I also have the tools to avoid it most of the time. I don't really fast anymore and have been maintaining my weight very well on a high protein diet. I keep an eye on my macros and make sure I am eating at least 130 grams of protein daily. I do functional strength training and care mostly about keeping my body strong and flexable enough to stay out of a nursing home when I enter my senior years.
Watching my father spend 28 years of his life giving up, and growing weaker taught me some seriously valuable lessons, the most important being the quality of life I want to live is 100% my resonsibility. My dad refused to take responsibility for his health and instead decided to place the blame on his ancestry. His motto being "I can't change, I was born this way," Making an ample amout of threats in his last few months (post amputation) that my sister and I were going to end up exactly like him, that there was no way to out run this destiny that was waiting for us. My father was a smart man so I think many wouldn't understand his stance in this, as it is just not true, but my father was also very narcissitic and couldn't see fault in his own actions becuase in his eyes he lived his life perfectly without fault.
Marching forward I will live my life as an example to my children on how to take accountablity for our life, how to cultivate a life of health and happiness. I want to teach them lessons out of a place of learning and love. I do not want to give them the what not to do guide that I recieved that came out of a place of anger and loathing. Life is hard, and there isn't enough time on this planet to get it all right, every year passing is faster than the last, start living for everyday instead of waiting for life to give you a break.
