Always 100% Me

And so begins a tale of three parts...

Recently a Facebook friend commented on a #tbt picture of mine how she loved that I always was 100% me no matter what. The picture in question was from several years ago. In it, my daughters and I sported huge grins, coordinating outfits, and were striking a sassy pose. I was also close to 300 pounds in that picture. From the sassy grin on my face, you would have never realized how much it hurt just to walk.

300 pounds? Ok, that is a smidge of an exaggeration. Full disclosure I come from a big Italian family whose love of storytelling, makes the fish always a bit bigger in the retelling than it was in the catching. The truth is it took many years of dedicated effort to get my 5'2 self up to 283.6. Pretty close to 300. How did that happen? Or the question I get asked all the time: you look like a new person, how did you change? The answer lies in three things: knowing myself, accepting myself, and refusing to allow who and what I was to excuse me from becoming who I wanted to be.

I didn't. Change that is. I was, and am, and will always be me. Every single tool I used to gain nearly 300 pounds, I still have. Every single tool I used to lose 131.6 pounds, I had when I was at my heaviest. That is what I think people don't realize. Humans always have, at every moment of their lives, the potential for the great and the terrible, simultaneously existing within. The only thing that matters is what we choose to accentuate. The parts of my personality, my background or story if you will, my mindset, my flaws, my strengths, my character...none of that changed. Sure, certain aspects of me are stronger and more in the forefront now or vice versa but I am not any different now than I was then. I am always me. I look back on those "before" pictures and feel nothing but understanding. I cannot say or feel mean things about those pictures because to do so, I might as well go say mean things to the mirror now.  

I'm getting ahead of myself here. My natural inclination to leap up on a soapbox and begin apostatizing to the masses on how best to fix every single one of their problems is disrupting the flow of how I went from the left picture to the right. To properly understand that we have to understand where I came from. We have to start at the beginning. 

Born the natural daughter of nobody knows who, with a clearly muddled genetic background, in an undisclosed place in Ohio on June 19th, 1983; I was adopted at 3 weeks old into a large family living in rural Pennsylvania on July 8th. Despite having had 3 sons and 3 daughters already, my Mom desperately wanted another child and couldn't have anymore so she looked high and low until I dropped into her lap. The opinions on adoption are as varied and fierce as those on any hot-button issue but for me, it is a wonderful blessing. I have always felt my family was simply my family. My method of entry into it was more unconventional than natural birth or c-section but destined nonetheless. They are my people and I am there's. Now, this is not to say that a good and destined thing cannot come with a bit of negative baggage. Or a lot of it. Sometimes the side effect of being given up for adoption is that it can cause a person to hold those they love at arm's length and their own emotions and feelings even farther. Aristotle said "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom" but how do you begin to know yourself when you cannot be honest with yourself? The more you lie to the person in the mirror the more troubled your spirit gets, and the more you have to stuff away. 

The consequence of this stuffing away of things that bother you, portray themselves differently in different people. For me, they resulted in stuffing my face with food. Any food. All food. Lots of food. The wonderful and terrible thing about using food as comfort when you are a food lover is that it is the most delicious divine fall to the bottom. See, I didn't just use food as an escape from all the things I did not want to think about. I. Love. Food. [note I say love not loved.] I love how pretty it looks on a plate...the colors and textures and tantalizing aromas wafting up. I love how it feels as it brushes past my lips, rests on my tongue, and glides down my throat. You can do so many creative things with food. It can evoke memories. It can cause drowsy languorous behavior. It can energize and revitalize. It can clear the sinuses in a fiery rush of spice. It's wonderful. It is possibly my first love. Food is life. No matter how far I go down my health journey I will never forget that food is one of life's exquisite pleasures offered to us, even beyond the fact that its consumption allows us to continue living. Now the important distinction is that the consumption of delicious living food allows you to continue living. Gorging yourself on sugar-filled disgusting fried junk food kills you. Now that is the honest truth. Unpleasant to hear but truthful nonetheless.   

And for the longest time, I was not honest with myself. My lie? It wasn't regarding the merits of junk food, it was deeper. My lie was that I wasn't worth the effort and was a failure because I couldn't do it like everybody else. But I wasn't anybody else but me. I could only do and be me. There was a process of about 4 years before January 1st, 2015 when I began to lose weight were I simply said fuck it. [sorry for the cussing Mom and Dad]. I woke up and realized I was incredibly fat and had no desire to do what I knew had to be done to lose weight. I cared so much what other people thought of me that I had become a near recluse in my house. I was ashamed to go to the grocery store. I was ashamed to be seen shopping for and loving on clothes. I was ashamed to be seen enjoying food. I was ashamed to be seen loving on my daughters and enjoying being a Mom. I was ashamed at the realization I thought differently from almost everyone I knew about politics and religion. I was ashamed at wanting to read more than doing anything else. I was ashamed at how loud I was, how loudly I laughed. I was ashamed because I didn't want to make up excuses for why I was fat. I knew why. I ate too much and moved too little because eating all the time allowed me to not focus on changing what hurt inside.

But then spring of 2011 I had the thought: that is really dumb. Why do you care? So what you are nearly 300 pounds? Does that extra weight negate your humanity? Are you suddenly undeserving of enjoyment of life? I am here. I am alive. I like food. I like to cook it, eat it, make others eat it, and take pictures of it. I like books. I love to read any and all books more than nearly everything except eat. I love fashion. I love bright colors, accessories, and how clothes can become a costume for who you want to be that day. I love my daughters. I love being a Mom and helping these adorable little humans discover how powerful they are. I love to think about things. I even now find myself feeling silly for writing that sentence which goes to show you my journey isn't over yet because why in the world would a human feel shame for admitting the enjoyment of thinking? But culturally the pastime of "hmm ya sure this...but...maybe it could be this....or what about that...or oooooh that is a new way of looking at that problem" isn't admired anymore. The possibilities for why that is could take up an entire book. Sufficed to say I realized it was dumb to be ashamed for the enjoyment of thinking of new ways of looking at things. And this moment. This beautiful moment in 2011 that I will never forget, is when I realized what freedom felt like. Allowing myself the grace to just be me. Allowing myself the space to be me no matter what and knowing that I would still have value simply because I was human, not because of what I did was....incredible. And that moment began one of my favorite parts of my journey thus far.

Because during this time I focused all of my attention on living. Or should I say living life to the fullest measure in the most decadent way possible? Gatsby had nothing on me, honey! I read, I laughed as loudly and as long as I wanted. I began sharing my thoughts and opinions without fear that people would leave me if they knew what I thought. I bought and slayed in the most fabulous-over the top-you[supposedly]-shouldn't-wear-that-at-your-size clothes. I cooked and ate and hosted dinner parties. I drank a fair amount of wine. I read. I read a lot. Anything. Everything. Most of who I am today I formed during that reading period actually. And I danced, with wild abandon to loud loud music. I shook my tushy like I did not care who was watching or what it all looked like all jiggily. Because weirdly I suddenly didn't care. Because I could not be anybody but me. I was going to die someday and I damn it I wanted to know what it felt like to just dance, moving my body to the music as it felt natural. Today. Not tomorrow. And today I was 283.6 pounds. So today I would dance. Not because tomorrow wasn't promised but because TODAY was here now. and TODAY I wanted to be happy and enjoy living. 
Yassssssss Queen!!!! ;)

So I threw parties and danced on tables.

I cooked and ate.

And went out and about in public in style.

Until the bottom caught up with me. Because the truth is, balance is one of the most important things in life. And while this part of my journey had been one hedonistic pleasure after the other, and I had grown and matured in ways I hadn't known possible, I was also slowly killing my body with food. You can only eat too much and never move for a certain amount of time before it catches up to you. It began to hurt my knees to stand. I began to get out of breath going up a flight of two steps. I didn't fit in chairs very well. [I literally broke a chair sitting on it on vacation. I laughed louder than anybody else. Inside not so much.] My bones ached and my skin felt stretched too tight. But what was worse? I was bitterly unhappy. See too much sugar, and too much food intake and too little exercise end up causing hormonal imbalances among all the other more acknowledged forms of obesity problems. I could have dealt with the body pain longer but not feeling like myself...that was a new form of torture.

My first panic attack hit me out of nowhere and I thought I was dying. I thought my balls-to-the-wall method of eating had finally caught up with me and I was going out in a blaze of heart attack glory. This began a downward spiral of fear, obsession, pure blistering terror, and anxiety. I didn't know this me. I didn't know I had it in me. My entire life was built on the premise that I could be happy no matter what. I was the person who said: No money? Meh, you don't need it! Just look at the beautiful sky and smell the honeysuckle on the breeze! It's free! I was the person who cajoled and browbeat everyone to enjoy every last drop of all the experiences life had to offer. We need to eat lunch? Let's make it a party! In every single way, I sought happily. I wanted the most out of everything. I had always been the person who refused to look at anything but the silver lining. This new me who was filled with fear, palpitating heart, clammy palms, short breath, and eventual tears was a stranger. I couldn't find the happy. The lining was black as night and I felt like a failure. I didn't feel like me. That loss was worse than all the losses before.

But I wasn't a new me then either. I was still me. And that intense desire to be happy was still there buried under the sugar-filled misery and it is what helped save me. I began to read and ask questions and think about my lifestyle as it related to hormones and panic attacks. I began to think about what I was really afraid of and excavate some of the things I had spent 32 years stuffing away. Meeting my fears and emotions for the first time and allowing them to exist in an acknowledged way didn't make them disappear but it took away their teeth. I wasn't afraid of being afraid anymore. That combined with learning about the connection between living food v. fake food and a sedentary lifestyle v. healthy movement as it relates to the fight or flight caveman inside us, gave me the space to balance myself.  I began to cook with only fresh ingredients and eat only deserts that I made homemade. [if you have to spend hours making a donut...you eat donuts fewer times in a week lol] I began taking vitamins and drinking copious amounts of calming camomile tea post-meditation. Realizing fear is a normal part of life and that it was ok to fear, to have been hurt, didn't make me weak or weird but normal. Realizing that real superheroes are those who can be honest with themselves and the world over what they fear was liberating.

But

I wasn't done

   I was just beginning.

Christmas of 2014 was brutal for me. The more I built and strengthened the inside of myself the more impatient I got with the outside. At that point, I realized that I had been wrong my entire life. I wasn't just built big. I had made myself big to hide from myself. The more I made peace with my demons and got to know who I was and began to flesh out who I wanted to be the more the weight weighed on me. I knew all I wanted in life was not possible if I did not lose weight because who I wanted to be was a human who felt no limitations. I wanted to be a human who was willing to sacrifice personal momentary comfort for the achievement of what she wanted. I wanted to be a superhero. And I wanted to be happy most of all. Being 283.6 pounds was not making me happy. Feeling like a putz because I was not going after what I wanted was not making me happy. I wanted to be lithe and strong. I wanted to have energy and flexibility. I wanted to travel the world without my size being an issue. I wanted more.

And for the first time in my life, I wanted more, more than I wanted pasta. I wanted to be strong more than I wanted mashed potatoes. I wanted to have energy more than I wanted homemade cinnamon rolls. I wanted to have flexibility more than I wanted bread. I wanted to sweat and jiggle and be out of breath more than I wanted to sit still and slowly die. I was miserable and I didn't want to be miserable anymore. 

So January 1st, 2015 at midnight I decided that I would take 365 days and be a different kind of miserable. I was miserable already so I might as well be the kind of calorie-restricted sweating sort of miserable. 

Sidenote here...what happened between then and now, has all happened without buying any diet plan, gym membership, diet pills or supplements, exercise programs/dvds, or exercise equipment (I did have access to my parent's and sister's treadmill however and year #2 I did buy resistance bands from Amazon for $20). I live in the middle of American, middle of Missouri, in a tiny town close to not a single place. There isn't a gym for 100s of miles and I simply did not have the funds for any of that. Takeaway... A complete lifestyle change is possible with nothing but willpower and your feet. 

And discovered to my INTENSE SURPRISE that I freaking loved exercise! haha

Now, mind you this did not happen overnight. The first 6 months I walked REALLY slowly for 20 min and did 1 sorta-ish sit up. But I did it every single day. NOT only that but I quit all my favorite foods cold turkey. No sugar. No carbs. No gluten. Nothing that didn't rot quickly if not eaten. Through Instagram, I had gotten a tip regarding intermediate fasting which ended up being a game changer for me. Saving all my calories for a specific window during a day was the perfect fit for me. It might not work for everybody but for me, it is easier to fast for 16 hours, workout, and then have a giant hedonistic flavor-filled meal of meats and veggies than it was to eat 6 tiny meals of nuts and carrot sticks all day long. This first half of 2015 was MISERABLE and WONDERFUL. It felt powerful. I felt in charge of my body for the first time ever. Slowly the pounds melted off and the energy levels rose until it fell off faster and I realized buried under all the lushes rolls was a muscular girl who loved to run and climb and lift and stretch and jump. I still have not discovered ankles but perhaps that's reaching too far. But I am running 4-6 miles a day. I can nearly complete a full pull-up. Every night before bed I do 50 pushups, 50 crunches, and plank for 1 1/2 min. In some ways, it is easier now, and in other ways, those 50 crunches are just as hard as that 1 sorta situp on January 1st, 2015. I'm still me. It still takes nothing but resolve and commitment. The difference is that now it's almost always fun. 

I just completed a 10k beating my previous best time by 5.4 min and am signed up for my first Half Marathon in the Spring. The plan is to do a whole marathon within a year. This new love of long distance running has changed up the food I inhale a bit as this type of demand on the body requires more water, calories, and actual carbs. That was an adjustment to get my mind to accept a much higher calorie intake and to put sweet potatoes into my diet because I am of course absolutely terrified of going back to my unhealthy size. It wasn't too hard though because I've never felt better. The energy level, overall physical and mental health, and strength are amazing. The bigger reservoir of endurance and speed more than makes up for the mental hurdle of changing from calorie restriction to extra fuel for the run. I recently found a quote from Lauren Goss that made me ugly cry. I made my daughters read it as well. It goes like this:

"...exercise should be about celebrating the strength of my body! Workout as love for yourself. Each body is an absolutely incredible machine and is not meant to look one particular way. It's meant to be a home for your soul and to carry you on grand adventures."

That last part...in red...makes me cry every single time I read it. 

       Change isn't easy but it is just as possible as never changing. Literally, the only thing that matters in life is what you want. If you don't want it, it won't happen. People say all the time 'I wish I was this and that'. And its true, they do wish it. They don't want it. Wanting something, really want it on a bone-deep level, causes a human to begin to problem solve. What are the ways I can get from here to there? The life I wanted was on the other side of a few years of intense calorie restriction, reforming of habits and lifestyle, and a lot of sweat. But I wanted it more than I wanted what I had. There is no magic pill. There is no magic diet. There is no magic exercise program. There is only simply every day doing what needs to be done. For losing weight this is eating less and moving more. That is all.

In simplicity is all the beauty of the universe. The way to a healthier more fit you is simply to move more, eat less, and do that every single day with dogged determination. 

That is the hard part. Every. Single. Day. And if you are like me with a food addiction and a body who holds onto carbs the way mine does, you will likely have to do it every single day until you die. That is the hard part. 

"Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. 

But almost anyone can do that. 

Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream as long as it takes to die.

True courage is facing life without flinching.

I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end.

I'm talking about enduring the boredom, and the messiness, 

and the inconvenience of doing what is needed to be done." 

-Robin Hobb

That is where greatness lies: dogged repetition. The method does not matter. The repetition is what counts. And take hope because humans are innately habitual creatures who enjoy repetition! Think of how many times you brush your teeth or wipe your behind in your life. It is a habit. Habits can be made and broken. All it takes is the repetition of the new thing you want. You want something? Do what needs to be done to make it happen. 

No excuses. No glamorization. It will be hard. It will not be fun. 

....until

Suddenly it will be fun. It will become natural. The new normal. Your energy levels will go up. Your bones will cease to hurt. Your brain fog will go away. Your kindness and happiness will increase dramatically. 

you are worth it because you are here. 

***Several people have asked for my personal meal plan/recipes etc. I will be making a blog post complete with an eating schedule, recipes, shopping tips, and pics here in a week or so. Comment on this post if you want an alert when the post goes live.