Two years ago I turned 30. It's a monumental number really. At least in my own mind I think of 30 as you finally made it! You aren't a 20 something year old fresh out of college and getting settled in a career. By 30 you have come face to face with the world pretty head on. You have experienced victories, defeats, and setbacks. Adulting...isn't it grand? At 30, I was adulating pretty well. I had a career working for a global logistics company as a customs broker, I had enough money to pay my bills and left over to save each paycheck, and I knew who I was. Yes, I was single, but I was in a good place where if that was my future, I was really, truly okay with it. I had all these things and something else; weight and a lot of it. Since starting my desk job 5 years earlier, my life had become sedentary. I had gone from around 250 to almost 300 pounds. I told myself I wouldn't allow my weight to go over 300. A year later, the scales tipped over 300 and I was well on my way to 320. 300 must have been the magic number in my life because once my weight busted through that marker, I started to really notice how unhealthy I felt all the time and how simple task were becoming more complex and difficult. Fast forward to my 32nd birthday just this month on the 13th. I weigh 320 pounds. Standing to fold my laundry requires several times of sitting down to rest because my back starts to ache so bad. Cleaning my apartment has to be done in time managed increments because I can't keep move, bending, and lifting for a continuous period. If given the choice to take a walk or lay down to take a nap, the nap wins every time. My personal hygiene has become more of a task and I often don't feel as clean as I should. It all adds up to one thing. My weight has finally started to rule my life completely. Every action, movement, and task is dictated by how and if I can manage it.
I tried to lose weight many times before and of those times, only once did I really give it a good go. At the time, I was living at home with my parents, struggling to find a job that would allow me to move out and have my own life. Only a short time before, I had been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome or PCOS for short. The doctor told me it was affecting my health and weight negatively because it messed with my hormonal levels. Suddenly a lot of things in my life made sense; the depression, the dark areas of scaly skin, the constant weight gain, the random, and most of the time nonexistent cycles, and my desires for sugars/carbs daily. I did my own research too and realized I was dealing with something that I couldn't get rid of. I would forever be linked to this. It would have been easy to give up knowing there was no "cure" but instead, it pushed me. I wanted to be better and do better. I started taking Metformin and birth control regularly to regulate my body's imbalances. I was fortunate to have an active job and even when I came home, I still put in time working out. I ate better by drinking more water and counting calories. My body started to respond! I lost 30-40 pounds in about 7-8 months. People started to notice and as they noticed, I noticed too. I felt good. I felt accomplished! My weight was 220 pounds. I was 20 pounds away from being officially out of the 200 pound bracket. I had looked PCOS in the face and said beat it!!
We have already established, however, that this didn't last. My memory of the day things changed is the first day we drove into North Carolina to lay my grandmother to rest and finalize her last wishes. It was a bad week; full of raw emotion, hotel living, eating out having bad food every meal, and no exercise. I'm pretty sure upon weighing myself when we got back I had gaining back 10 pounds in a week. Life wasn't great either in my own personal life. I was struggling to make ends meet financially, I had a bad living situation, and I just didn't care. I let myself go. All the things I had pushed myself to be better at I now allowed to run amuck in my life. The weight came back and when I started my career a little over 6 years ago, I was back at 250 pounds.
This brings us pretty much up to speed today. I still have that job. I have done well for myself overall. I finally have my own apartment, a really nice car, independence, hobbies, and good friends. But I also still have the weight. A constant reminder that I have a good life, but because I'm so heavy, it's not a fully alive one. I stole that from a book I have started reading again, or rather, started listening to. Ken Davis is a Christian comedian and motivational speaker. I came across his book randomly one day while I was looking for a comedian to listen to at work. His presentation to an audience about his book, Fully Alive, struck a nerve with me that day. He spoke about having everything he wanted but having become complacent, he had stopped living. His health was becoming affected to a point he could no longer enjoy things like running around with his grandchildren and he likened his state to being a dead man. I immediately ordered his book when I got home and after reading a couple chapters, it became a lovely, dusty decoration in my home. It would take several years for me to pick the book back up again, but his message has always stuck with me. He quoted a second-century bishop and theologian Saint Irenaeus that has never left me. "God's glory is the earth creature made fully and eternally alive with the life of the Spirit." In simple terms, the glory of God is man fully alive, by Ken's interpretation. Now I have been going on for a while now and this introduction is getting long, so I'll save how this book has changed my attitude for now, but let me say that a light bulb went off the moment I realized my spiritual health and physical health were interdependence on each other. If I didn't work on one, I wouldn't be able to work on the other.
I don't want to live my 30 years as an unhealthy person. I have known for a long time that I have the power to change my life, I just have to set my mind down the correct course of thought, step out in faith, and do it. Over the past two weeks, a friend and I have started walking regularly. It's hard to fight for every step knowing many years ago I could do an hour of kickboxing straight. But the point is that I have started and I have discovered a secondary motivation. Virtual races! I have a runner's heart, just not the physical body to do that right now. For the same cost as a registration fee, you can pay for finisher metals once you complete your mileage goals. How awesome is this! Even as a 320 pound woman, I can earn rewards for taking myself for a walk! As I sit here writing, I am reminded of another hurdle coming down next week. My gallbladder comes out next Tuesday. The gallstones inside have become a painful (literal) reminder of my poor food choices. Once it does, my fuel will be low fat and low carb. Each of these things has a greater purpose toward my healthy living. Once my gallbladder is gone, my body will not be as able to deal with fat like it once was because it won't have storage of bile available to help with digestion. The low carb side of things is to help control my PCOS; both the cravings and to help my body better process food so it doesn't get stored as fat. With me on this part of the journey, is another friend who will be cooking meals for me throughout the week. I can hear you now, but here's the deal. I don't like cooking. I never have. Because of this, it becomes a major stumbling block for me when I need to eat a certain way. Paying someone else to buy and prepare my meals guarantees to a degree that I am eating good, healthy food to fuel my body.
There is so much more to tell and I'm going to do that though this blog in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. If no one ever reads this, it's fine. It's not about others ultimately. If my story can inspire someone else, that's great! But at the end of every blog post, this is about me. And so I leave this first post with a picture. It's not a flattering one but it's real because it's me in my current state. In a time where I avoid having my picture taken because I can't control how I will look, I post a lot of edited selfies. But because I know things will get better, I'm okay with sharing it.
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