That Health Thing...

I had another blog for awhile that I got sick of. In that blog I mentioned my problems with fitness and diets and such and I had meant for the blog to be sort of a journal for me as I chronicled my own personal journey through weight loss/increased health and personal growth as I attempted different hobbies and such in order to perhaps find something I truly enjoy and am passionate about.

So yeah, like many things, I gave up on that blog. I could give reasons, but really? I'm too lazy to have two blogs :-P No, seriously, I am.

If there's one thing I've learned, and grown to accept, it's that I'm a very sedentary person. I enjoy sitting. I enjoying resting. I enjoy gazing at the sky in silence, my brain whirring a million miles a second. I sometimes blame this on my own extremely chronic insomnia that has plagued me my entire life. When you have 2 or so hours every night to just stare at the ceiling as you try to sleep, you tend to build your own little fantasy worlds, your own stories, your own long inner monologues. From conversations with God to self-insert fanfics to planning out the next week of my life meticulously... Yeah, that's just how I work.

So I think part of my journey is to try to take my focus from being so much inside into noticing the outside, and caring for it. Stop thinking about where I'd like to move the sofa, positioning it a dozen different ways in my head, and start clearing space. Stop reading people's blogs and forum posts anonymously and start contacting them to actually talk. Be active. Enjoy life.

But I guess that's not entirely the point of this post, now is it?

I've been reading on a friend's blog and she has talked of her weightloss/fitness journey, where she's come from, and where she is now. While I wish her luck (and I really, really do!) it has made me feel like I should share a bit of that on here.

There's a lot, so I'll be summing up quite a bit of this...

I've never been thin. I've never been fit. I've never been in shape.

You know those fat kids that eat Dorito's like they're breathing air and gasp for breath while walking up stairs and are picked last for basketball, even by the teacher? Yeah, that's me.

Growing up my family tried to make me feel better about myself, tried to build my confidence. I won't say it totally backfired, but, well... essentially I assumed the identity of the "fat girl."

That's who I was, right? Like a skin color or gender, it could not be changed. I was fat. I had a certain life expectancy, a certain way I was supposed to act, certain clothes I could wear, etc that was all different from "the norm."

I went through "skinny phases" here and there as I grew, but I was always pudgy even then, never the gangly or thin girl. I have always had my thighs rub together and wear my pants down or give me awful sores if I wore skirts. I often lost my balance. My pants usually cut into my stomach so deeply that I now have a "bromodial stomach," a tubby stomach with two separated flabs of fat that accentuates itself. I had an early period (age 10), early breasts (started growing when I was 8), and early body hair and odor for which I was teased.

To top it off, I was 5' 4" in 4th grade.

I was a freak and I knew it.

And I separated myself from my body.

I dressed in whatever clothes I felt like, because I knew I wasn't highlighting anything. My hair was always down and typically unkempt and tangled, because why would I bother to brush it? I never cared about myself physically. Never took care of myself. My body would fail me, that was something I always believed. I would probably die young of one of the many diseases that plagued our family and I may as well just not give a s--t about the vessel that would lead to that demise. It was only there to move me around, that's it...

When we got married I was around 230 lbs or so.

When we went through the TTC and adoption journey for Paxton, I ballooned up even more. I threw out my scale. I would try to walk places and I was always gasping for breath, my fingers and feet swollen and fat and sometimes unmoveable. It was almost impossible to get a middle seatbelt around me. I tell people I was 250 lbs when we adopted P, but honestly? I could have been A LOT higher.

I was so depressed during that journey. I wasn't working and I was in a town with only one friend, who was working. We only had one car which Nik took to work. I stayed up unil 4am and slept till noon. I popped in a frozen pizza and tater tots for a meal, and ate a whole Totino's pizza for lunch by myself. Most days my own activity was to get up, make the bed, get dressed, walk the dog in our front lawn, eat, and sit at the computer in the back of our house, in the dark corner with the cold floor, quiet and alone. No matter how many lights we put on, how many windows we opened, that was the darkest corner I've ever seen. Even cameras couldn't go off there without a flash. I would sit there, only moving to use the restroom or get more food. Then Nik would come home and I'd feed us both again and we'd play video games and then he'd conk out asleep and I'd just get right back to it, in my corner hunched over the computer with a big plate of food, depressed and feeling like this journey would never end and we were just throwing money and hope into a black hole, knowing full well it would never happen for us.....

Then it did.

And life got crazy.

Part of my own emotional issues during that first year with P probably stemmed from all the time I'd spent alone and depressed. I truly didn't believe they'd even let us keep this little boy until we got on the plane to the US, and it was like my brain literally could not handle it. That was a dark period for us... but with so much light thrown in.

And it got better. And better and better and better. P bonded and he got healthier and I got healthier and soon I realized I was making healthy food for him and crap food for me and, dagonnit, that shouldn't be the case!

So I started to eat better. And walk more, and play with him, and throw balls, and roll around.

I was around 200 lbs when I started the journey of trying to induce lactation to adopt Ambrose.

On top of eating better because, well, my baby would be getting that food, the pumping really helped me burn fat. I lost roughly a pound a week for 6.5 months. I was around 160 when Ambrose came home, and feeling incredible.

Last November we joined the gym. I was 174.

And I don't believe I've lose a lb of it.

But you know what? That's okay. It'll come off eventually, I think.

Because over the past 4 years we've been instituting changes.

Sloooow, slooooow, steeeeady changes.

Cutting down on soda, changing type, then cutting right out until it's a once-a-week thing.

Cutting down on pizza, burritoes, quesadillas, etcs. Pizza more than once a month? Uuuuuughhh, no please!

Slowly adding in more foods, more veggies. Getting to like salads. Getting to drink water. Getting to see apples as a good snack. Slow cooking with fresh veggies.

And on top of that? Nik's running and my yoga. We're both learning so much about our bodies, it's insane! I have bad knees, my left leg is very flexible, I hold my legs incorrectly when I walk, etc. I'm learning to adjust, stretch, feel, and figure out what I need.

I can do a push up, and don't even get me started on sit ups!

And when I stretch my legs my feet no longer go numb and my knee no longer feels so painful I have to stop and gasp for breath.

I'm getting there. Not even really close to where I WANT to be yet, but I'm getting there, slowly and surely.

Now I just need to stay on this path for, oh, the rest of my life... :)