Preface: You know when you were a kid, or maybe even an adult and you have a bandage stuck onto your skin and you know it is going to hurt to pull off? So, you pick around the edges trying to make it pain-free, only to find it makes the pain last longer? Well, this is what this post is for me this week. – I have picked, edited, and changed it multiple times. Only to find it does ease the pain or fear of sharing this information about myself. Therefore, I am going to rip off the bandage and expose the healing wound…Ok take a deep breath and on the count of 3!
1,2,3…
I have addressed the “Increasing my life, ” but reluctantly I have avoided the “Weighty” issue.
The weight topic is hard for me; it is scary and unnerving, to be honest. But to move forward in my story, it must be told. I am now exposing a part of my life I have hid for years, quite the opposite of who I was. I prided myself on being invisible and kept to myself, never putting myself out there. Which now seems crazy, how can an obese woman be invisible? In my thought process, I was if I kept to myself and avoided controversy.
Yes- I have a weight issue. It has been who I am for as long as I can remember. Food is my friend. Food makes me happy, comforts me, relaxes me. It is my stress relief…basically food has been everything to me; it filled any void I had in my life.
But on my journey of increasing life, somewhere along the road, I woke up, had an epiphany. I decided to put myself and relationship with food in check.
Now- this idea was never on my list of 50 things to accomplish in my 50’s. I have tried multiple times to lose weight and failed miserably. I have made New Year’s resolutions year after year to lose weight, and it never happened. I had decided I was going to be heavy, a fat chick, morbidly obese, and that was it, and I accepted it.
See at one point in my life, my weight well exceeded 500 pounds- see my fat glamor shot posted. I am not proud of that, but it is a fact. I had gastric bypass about 14 years ago, at the encouragement of my doctor. From that surgery, I lost weight, but not like I was supposed to, I did not do what was needed to succeed, and then I gave up.
When I started teaching about 10 years ago, my weight was just around 400 pounds, and at times lost and gained weight. Then in 2010, I became ill from my gastric bypass surgery. I had to have revision surgery- not once but twice the same year. Yes, I lost weight, and I was less than 250 pounds, which was fantastic for me. But it was not a healthy loss of weight, and as I recovered over the next year, I slowly gained weight back.
In 2012, I was back up to 250 pounds, and I needed to have skin removed from my stomach area because of the weight loss over the years. I called it my “Flabectomy”. That was a quick 25-pound weight loss, but like before, after that surgery, I gained and gained slowly creeping back up the scale.
Last February, I went to urgent care for my monthly sinus infection. That night I got on the scale, and I saw a number that I had assured myself I would never cross again. I was over 300 pounds! Something inside of me felt defeated, and I realized I needed to make a change. I went home so bitterly angry at myself, and I decided that I needed to attempt to lose weight once again. I was not sure how, or if it would last but I was going to do it!Since that moment, I have been decreasing my weight substantially. I am doing it the healthy way. I have drastically changed my diet, and I exercise 6 days a week. I would have never imagined me doing all of this! By the way, I do not consider any of this a diet, it is my new lifestyle, and I am not looking back. I will share more of my weight loss/life- style journey in future posts.
So, through this experience of losing weight, I have become more confident and more aware of who I am.
Decreasing my weight has increased my life dramatically, but that’s another story to come!