My Journey started back in 2008 at a doctor’s appointment. I was feeling tired, run down, depressed. I didn’t care enough about myself to even put on anything more than sweats and a sweatshirt. Finally it was my turn, and unknown to me at the time the path that I was walking was about to get hard. It started when I stepped on the scale. The numbers just kept going up and up and up. Finally they slowed to a stop and much to my horror and dismay the display read 205. Wait…what…? Seriously, could it be possible that I weighed the same that I did the day I went in for my c-section to deliver Ally?
I instantly went into denial and locked the feelings of shame and worthlessness away for later. My doctor was of course concerned about my weight and decided that she wanted to run some blood tests to check thyroid, etc. Then I went home. All the tests that my doctor ran come back fine so there was no medical reason for me to be fat. I just was. It was lack of self control and depression. I stayed in denial for a few more months but then had to go back in for a recheck in August of 2009.
She then found some more issues and decided to run a complete blood panel on me. This is when it really hit me and I discovered just how serious this could get if I didn’t do something soon. She had me do a cholesterol screening. I was 27 and my total cholesterol was 236. The good was low the bad was high and I was in shock. How did it get to this point? I called my Dad. He has dealt with this a lot longer and while I do have family history there was no reason at 27, I should have had cholesterol that was that out of control. It was time to start changing some stuff now.
Drastically. I started making an effort to change my eating habits, it was difficult I kept falling back into the same habits as before. Then I decided I needed to start to exercise, I really wanted to run. I wanted to run a 5k.
So in late January of 2010 a friend and I started running. Well started walk/jogging and I could barely make it a quarter mile before feeling like I was going to die. I am truly not sure how I kept at it, I just had the urge to run, so run I did.
Slowly but surely the weight has come back down and 8 months after I had my cholesterol checked (2 months later than I was supposed to) I went back in to have my cholesterol re-checked. After a couple weeks I got my results mailed to me. It was amazing. My cholesterol had dropped from 236 all the way to 189 for total cholesterol. I was jumping up and down, calling my Dad, telling everyone who would listen what had happened.
Things were going well on that front but I still had my dream of running a 5k. What was going to stop me? I finally figured out that the only thing that was going to stop me was if I didn’t believe in myself. It was time to prove to myself and everyone else that I could do this. It was hard, exhausting at times, but somehow my determination was stronger always than the urge to quit.
I was doing it. I was a runner. My first 5k was originally going to be the Strawberry Run the first weekend of June 2010, but my sister in law was not going to be able to run it with me like we had planned. She found another 5k that was 2 weeks earlier on May 22, 2010. The Cheadle Lake 5k. I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into.
It was May, you would expect it be at least decent weather. No, it was freezing! And then came the actual run. Here I was thinking this was going to be some nice trail run, 3.1 miles out and back. This was a very difficult run. It started just fine along a gravel path then we ended up running through grass fields and trying not to twist our ankles in all the uneven ground. The grass had not been mowed and it was wet and cold. Somehow, someway I powered through this, probably mostly on adrenaline and finished in 31:06! What an insane rush of emotion and power to finish that! I had done it! I set a goal and saw it through to completion.
What an amazing feeling! I had such amazing support from friends and family to get to this point, when I wanted to give up and walk away I always had someone there pushing me and lifting me up to help me keep going. Since that first 5k I have run 2 more 5k’s and one 10k. I couldn’t have done this on my own strength and am thankful every day for all the people who have encouraged me along the way. I have surpassed my original goal of getting down to a size 12 pants and when I blew past that I was in such shock! It is such a huge thing to actually see your goals get met!
And while I see the change in myself it is still hard to accept and enjoy. I have never seen myself clearly. That is my current goal…to see myself clearly and accept and love myself fully and acknowledge all that I have accomplished. The journey is just starting and I am so thankful to take these first steps…everyday is a choice. You have to choose to eat right, choose to love yourself, choose to do whats right for your body by exercising it. Let’s all help each other to make these choices and support each other when we fall down.
Here are some picture of me along my journey of this weight loss...its been long and hard and it still hurts to see some of these. But I just remind myself I worked hard and that is not me anymore. And even when I was bigger I was still the same person inside.
These 2 pictures are from June of 2008.
This is me in November of 2008.
This is me November of 2009.
This is me today. I think I am finally happy. Not perfect but I can accept who I am and how far I have come.
