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Saturday, July 30, 2011

In the beginning there was food...

It's been about 4 years since my journey began. When I saw these pictures from our family trip to TN I was shocked, I didn't see myself the way the camera did. This was my wake up call. I thought to myself, how could I let this happen? How did I let myself become this huge person? I was content with my life; I had a good job, my own apartment and I had food. What more did I need?

Food was both my best friend and my enemy. Food was the one thing in my life I could control or so I thought, more often than not it controlled me. I constantly thought about it and would at times not eat at all in hopes I could just ignore the thoughts of the chocolate mousse or truffles and they would go away. I would go out of my way to make sure no one knew just how much I ate, so more often than not I ate at home alone. I could eat an entire cake and a pint of ice cream, that would be my dinner. It made me feel better at least for a little while. It took me a long time to realize that I was not happy with how I looked and was not happy with my life. If I wasn't happy with myself then what could I do to fix it.

It took someone telling my I needed to treat myself and this started me on my way to see what I could do to make myself look better on the outside and try to stop placating the inside with food. I started by buying a couple products from Aveda (this addiction will definitely have to be another post love their products) as a treat and then I started a few work out dvd's (which I did off an on) and I replaced over eating with video games. I would work out at home and try to eat the best I could, but still over ate. I did loose weight over the course of a year and a half I lost about 70lbs and got stuck at around 225lbs. I just didn't know how to portion what I ate. But, whenever I would feel like I shouldn't eat and knew I wasn't hungry I would play a game. This helped a lot, when I found an awesome group of people to play with online using my xbox.

Once I started to feel better about the way I looked on the outside, it internalized when I would hear someone say "You look great!". I then had to learn how to accept the comments. That was hard at first, to just learn that it's okay to say thank you. I am still learning that, but after so many years of being the big girl and not getting complimented ever even now it can be hard sometimes to just say thank you and not make a joke about it.

But on to happiness; the gaming in turn helped me find the love of my life who has been my biggest supporter and will never know just how much he has helped me not only find happiness but figure out that there are no limitations in life and you can do just about anything you set your mind to. Around the time I plateaued at 225lbs was when I met my awesome man, and he mentioned in conversation that he and his mom went running (I don't think he realizes he was the one that sparked my interest in the sport). Well this made me think, huh running I wonder if I could do that.

One day when I couldn't find those reebok easytone sneakers at citysports in my size I figured you know what let me just try that whole running thing. I walked over to marathon sports got fitted for running sneakers and downloaded a 4 weeks to a mile program for my iPod and began. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, my first week out I realized that I wasn't as strong as I thought I was and my knees told me so. After so many years of carry lots of weight my knees were not happy with this whole running thing. They told me so, in many painful ways. Lets just say that little 4 week program to a mile turned into 6 mos. I finally ran my first mile without stopping August 2010 and haven't stopped since. Running has given me a whole knew way to look at life and the way I live it.



3 comments:

  1. You're doing great! To be able to see that you are not happy and start working out and stick with it is just awesome. Sometimes you just hit a wall and don't feel like doing it anymore, but you have to be tough and stick it through. And look at that, you ran 2 half marathons. That is a great accomplishment.

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  2. I know and I got to do them with you, what better way to finish a half marathon than with you by my side! I love you!

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  3. I know. If it wasn't for you I probably would have never done that, and its something that I'm proud of having done. I love you too :)

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