Saturday, March 31, 2012

Mirror, Mirror

With most things in my life, I'm usually hesitant to share anything about myself because I'm an intensely private person. But for the past few months I've been on a journey that I think needs to be shared with others and it only really hit me today that maybe I should put this out there and if someone happens across it and is inspired to make a change in their own life, than all of this is good.

So anyways, the story starts off like this: Vanity. It's not just vanity, but a combination of vanity and good health. It's a weird mix, but so is pear and mustard (and they are amazing together).

For most of my life I have been over-overweight and because of the way weight is viewed in Western society, it has excluded me from social groups, not to mention affected my self-esteem and image. In addition to that, my weight has limited me in my activities and kept me from doing things that I would have loved to do. And lets not leave out the health issue. Granted a few extra pounds is not going to kill you, but having more then needed plus excess causes all kinds of problems; from mobility to difficultly breathing to diabetes.

You might be wondering where is this going? Don't worry I'm getting to that ;)

So like I said earlier, it starts off with vanity. I had talked about it with my mom and (of course, like all moms) she just wants me to be healthy. But it's more than that for me, I want to look good and I want others to think I look good too. Vanity.

So I started to come up with a plan. It wasn't like I hadn't ever tried to lose weight before, I had. Some stuff worked, some stuff didn't. But this time had to be different. I had to really commit myself to changing my lifestyle. And just like a smoker who wants to quit, I had to fail a few times before I could say, "Right! This time is going to be different; it has to be, because I can't do this anymore, literary and 'figuratively'." (See what I did there? That's a play on words... ^_^)

So I joined a health clinic with my mom (she joined more for moral support, not because she needs to lose weight per say) and I started to change my life around. And it was hard. I would get a craving for something sweet, No. I would want to go out, No. I would want to munch on a snack, No. I went from eating to whatever to "Felicia! Put the cookie down and nobody gets hurt." I suppose it didn't help that I started on October 31... Actually, I remember sharing with a select few of friends and one asked me why on Halloween? My response, because, I'm STUPID! (Plus, Halloween fell on a Monday, so I blame the inventors of the calendar, whom were the Romans... Those sick bastards. Seriously, who designs a time keeping device that would torture someone is such a way? The Romans.)

This is me October 31, 2011

I weighted (oh my gosh I don't even want to say it!!) 308.25lbs (140.1kg)

This is me as of today

I weighted in at 276.5lbs (125.6kg)

That's a loss of 31.75lbs (14.4kg) and 40.5" over all.

I'm not even close where I want to be. But I'm going, I'm getting there. Every journey starts with a step and for the past 5 months I've been stepping and inching closer to what I want. I'm sorry for the disorganized blog, it's all coming out in a way that's a bit raw, but sometimes there are things that just need to be a bit raw (like a nice piece of steak).

I can't assume that your inspired, but I want to hope that you now too feel that nothing is out of your reach.