It's Time for Some Honesty

Up till now I have been hinting to you that I am over weight.  Well, that is not exactly true.  I am obese.  I know, I fibbed a bit, but I was not secure enough in myself to admit to the world that I am obese..... 

I have been over weight most of my life with brief months in between when I have been gloriously thin.  I think I can count those times on one hand, maybe three fingers.  The first time I was thin was right after High school .  In 7th grade I ballooned to a whopping size 20 and 180 lbs, from a normal sized 6th grader.  

I was obese from that point until I hit my freshman year in High school.  It was at that point when I finally did something about it and by my Junior year I was pretty nice looking.  It took me starving to achieve that however -- studying during lunch, keeping busy after school and on weekends, never being home unless I was forced to.  I just kept myself very busy.  Couldn't have been healthy though.

Then after High School, I got even thinner.  That, I think was the least I have weighed since I was probably age nine.  I actually got into a size 10/12 and boy, did I think I was great.  

From there my life went to hell,  and so did my body. It just kept getting bigger and bigger.   Then, after my divorce, I once again found myself at rock bottom and decided to try the gym.  I was living in a strange town because of the work I did.  It was only temporary because I moved from town to town with the work I was doing for a publishing company.  

I didn't know anyone and I needed something to do with my time, so I began working out in a gym that offered a three month special.  Within a week I had thrown all caution to the wind and, ignoring my trainer, I was galloping around the indoor track, (I wish more gyms had this in their facilities), bopping around to my Richard Simmon's "Take a Hike" tape.  Love that tape!

I remember the trainer standing there with his eyes bugged out when he saw me only one week from "almost dead", jogging around that track like there was no tomorrow. 

 "Please, mame!  You need to take it slow and work up to that!" he pleaded to deaf ears.  When he walked away I figured he was heading for the office phone to have the paramedics on stand-by for that heart attack he just knew was waiting for me on the next lap.  

But it didn't happen, (na na na na na na!  fooled you!).  I was weight training my upper body one day and the lower body the next and running every day after warming up on the exercise bike for 5 minutes.  I loved the weight training. I could feel my body respond and sense that it was getting stronger every day. It helped my bad knees.  They didn't creek every time I walked.  I could actually climb stairs.  

But then, I decided that I didn't really want to go all the way to the gym to work out so I began running around the circular gavel road driveway at the house where I was staying.  I would get off work, fix me a big plate of spaghetti and canned tomatoes, and then go out and run till dark.  I loved it!  It was the best time!  But then, there was nothing to interfere with it.  Just me and the running. 

It almost became an obsession.  I never missed a day of running.  I pushed myself further and further.  I went from a size 24 to a size 20 in just three months.  I only lost 30 lbs. but the inches just dripped off.  I was so proud of my new body.  

I suppose a size 20 doesn't sound great but to me it was the most wonderful thing in the world.  I bought jeans and cowboy boots and decided, when I got back to my home town, to go country western line dancing.  Don't need a partner for that!  But I soon learned that line dancing and running were two different breeds of cat and just because I can run  five miles on a flat track without breaking a sweat, doesn't mean I was in shape for line dancing........ Ye ha!

I would run around the river green belt a couple of times each week.  It was kind of fun running along with the thin people.  Oh, they could run faster than me, but I could do the three mile route and never breathe heavy.  Of course my Richard Simmons tape always went with me.  However, now I had re-recorded just the last 20 minute part of it where he takes his people up the mountain.  I  taped that part twice and just kept it going through the whole run. in a continuous loop.  No 20 minute warm up for me.  I was a lean mean machine... or so I thought.

Well,  family demands, job problems, divorce problems and men problems made me less and less active.  Finally I quit running all together.  No one told me that I would lose all my muscles and the fat would come back worse than ever.  And it did.  It took its time but it finally came back.

And, I got remarried again during all this time and went from a family oriented grandmother who never missed a birthday party or being in the delivery room with my daughters, to living in a recreational vehicle and traveling around the country with a husband who was a software programmer, was tone deaf and who couldn't follow a beat if it was standing in front of him -- very sedentary life.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  It was lots of fun!  We spent the first two years of our marriage never being home on a weekend.  We drove and drove and saw all sorts of exciting and wonderful things I had never seen before.  We ate in restaurants and when we weren't traveling he was working and I was trying to learn the computer so I would have something to do during the day.  RV parks are usually miles from town and I had no car to get around.  I was isolated and lonely and bored. 

The weight started piling on.  Ounce by ounce by ounce it kind of snuck up on me.  Well, here I am, obese again.  The first time I got on an exercise bike in almost six years of marriage I was gasping for air after 5 minutes.  How could I let myself get to this point?  

I didn't feel good, had aches and pains and felt like an old woman, when I'm not.  One day hubby brought home a book for me.  He had read about this lady and decided that she was crazy enough that I just might like her.  Her name was Susan Powter and her book was "Stop The Insanity" and she spoke my language.  

After reading her book I sat straight up on the couch and decided that it was time to find the real me inside this fat person who had taken over.  

I had already become a vegetarian so there wasn't much I had to change in the way of diet.  However, the changes were the few things I had clung to and refused to give up entirely.  Using butter, olive oil and dairy.  FATS...

I thought becoming a vegetarian would do the trick without having to give up everything.  What I didn't know is that it was the fats in those foods I had refused to let go of that were keeping me fat.  

I was eating better than I had ever eaten in my life.  But the weight was not coming off.  In fact, after becoming vegetarian I had actually gained weight.  But I felt good!  And so I knew I was on the right track.

Well, Susan inspired me to eat, (something that was foreign to me, but something I was glad she had given me permission to do), move, ( yes, I finally realized why I needed to exercise and why the fat had come back worse than before), and breathe.  Now, as a runner I knew the importance of breathing, but Susan explained everything in a way that made it crystal clear.  Bless you, Susan, for having the courage to tell it like it is!

And, I have started by keeping my fat grams for each day under 30%.  Later, I will drop that but for now, 30% is good.  I learned to read the labels and apply a simple formula to calculate the percentage of fat in a product.  I take the fat grams in a serving and times it by nine.  I take the sum of that and divide it by the number of calories in each serving.  That tells me what percentage of the food is fat.  I try and keep that number under 30% because then I know that I am not going over my 30%.

Other than that, I can eat anything I want. 

I also try and keep my  calories at 1600.  Susan explained that it takes 1600 just for the body to function normally.  She said she eats 5,000 calories a day because she burns a lot of it because she is so active.  So, the more active you are the more you can eat.  Isn't that fun! We certainly don't want to starve the body.

So, my journey is continuing and as I progress and grow and learn more about myself, I change and modify what works for me.  This is my story and I share it for one purpose... to inspire others to seek their own answers as I have.  It doesn't work for all people, but this is working for me.  

I will bring you along and when I feel comfortable with myself I will even put a picture up so you can see where I started and follow my journey.

So, let me know how you are doing and what is happening in your life.  You can contact me at weightloss@cactusventures.com

How Am I doing?  an update on my progress