On Your Mark… Get Set… Go!

         

        Taken Today: 1/17/15  (Age 42)                                                      August 1991 (Age 18)

Starting Weight:  308.2 lbs

Starting Measurements:

Neck:17 1/2 inches

Bust: 51″

 Waist 52 1/2″

 Hips 60″

Thigh 30″

Calf: 21″”

Sometimes I’m a bit of a slow starter.  I have an obsessive compulsive need to wait to start things until I’m organized.  And then I procrastinate getting things organized.  It’s a horrible habit, and it routinely undermines me.  It’s also the reason so much of my life has been wasted waiting for the ‘right time’.  Ironically, there never seems to be a ‘right time’.  So here I am leaping in.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and we talked about my health issues, fears, and goals.  I am blessed to have a wonderful doctor who takes the time to sit and listen to me, empathizes with me, laughs with me, and encourages me, never condemns my failures, never treats any question as a stupid one, and doesn’t dismiss every symptom as a weight related one.

But the truth is, nearly all of my health conditions ARE weight related, and even if they aren’t due solely to my weight, they are exacerbated by it.  And they continue to get worse.

At yesterdays appointment, I weighed in at 308.2.  Still down from the 325 lbs I weighed in July, but up from the 299 I weighed in August after a month of paleo eating.  I hadn’t even added exercise yet.  But I was feeling so much better!

Then things went crazy at work, I picked up very time consuming hobby (sports photography) right at the start of the school year and what turned out to be a State Championship Football Season for our Cushing Tigers! (insert cheering here!)

As exciting as it is chasing a dream, I would be so much better at it without this fluffy outer shell!

At 18, I was 150 lbs.  I was fit, energetic, and extremely depressed.  I felt completely unloveable. I didn’t feel I had anything to offer anyone outside of what I had to offer physically.  There were alot of factors that led to those feelings that I have since dealt with and overcome. Now, at age 42, I love myself.  I realize what I have to offer,.  Ironically, many others now only see my weight, and are blind to the rest.  Some days I’m able to easily dismiss it.  Others, it’s not so easy.  Not once in my life have I felt like I wasn’t hiding behind one wall or another.  Now it’s time to emerge, and become the woman I know I was born to be!

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
― Maya Angelou