6/8/2016: Plugging Along - And the Start of a Story

Weight:  154.8

For a few hours yesterday I had the wrong weight on yesterday's blog post.  I put up a quick post while I was at work and typed Weight: 150.0, instead of Weight: 155.0.  An honest mistake.  Or wishful thinking?  Who knows how that snuck in there, but I've corrected it.  Instead of losing 4.8 pounds yesterday I gained 2/10ths of a pound.  Ah well, so it goes.

Monday evening I went to the emergency room because the swelling in my finger kept getting worse instead of better and, sure enough, the finger is broken.  I go to the orthopedic doctor today to make sure the splint is all I need for it to heal properly.  I'm getting by fine with it in a splint.  The two most difficult things to do are type and wash dishes.  It is my right hand, my ten-key hand, so navigating in excel is a bit difficult.  It is not a big deal, though.  It is not enough of an injury to throw me off my exercise program, and that is a huge relief!  It's just a broken finger, not a big deal.  Hardly a deal at all, really.  Just something to take care of until it's healed.

As I reflect on the first several weeks of my 12 Week Challenge and the first four years of my Get Fit for Life Initiative I am impressed by how doable this has been, at this stage of my life.  I find myself wondering what I could have done differently earlier in life, so that I could have attained this peace of mind with exercising as a younger woman.  I think about how much permanent damage I did to my body, the stuff I can't undo, and wonder if there is any way to help others so they avoid this damage in the first place.  I don't know the answers, but I think about it a lot.

I'm not to my goal weight, yet, but I'll get there.  I feel strong and confident and, yes, thin.  Or at least thin-ish.  That is good enough for me.  All my clothes fit the way I want them to fit.  I'll lose a few more pounds but more importantly I will continue to tone and strengthen my body through exercise, good food, and plenty of rest.

I've struggled with my weight my entire life.  I've been as heavy as 250 pounds.  I lost too much weight when I was in college and at 117 pounds got carried into the campus hospital with mono and strep throat, so weak I couldn't walk.  I did most of the diet fads as they rolled out including Atkins, the Zone, Jenny Craig, NutraSystem, Weight Watchers, and others whose names slip my mind.  I've lost 50 pounds or more at least 6 times in my life.  I've gained it back every time except one.  And this time I'm not gaining it back.  What has changed?  What's different?  Why this time?  Why not last time, or the time before that or the time before that?

I think there are several factors that, combined, have put me in a frame of mind to finally take control of this beast of a problem.  I'm going to list them in chronological order.

I was at my heaviest and sickest when I was 38 or 39 years old.  I had an incredibly stressful job and I was a single mom with two adventurous teenagers.  I ate and drank too much and I never found time to exercise.  This is a guess, but I believe I weighed about 250 pounds. I felt like crap and my hair was falling out.  Believe it or not, I went to the doctor about my hair falling out.  That is what I was most worried about.  She blamed it on stress.  She said, "You are not going back to work, today.  Spend the afternoon outdoors, go for a long walk, figure out how to reduce the stress in your life."

I did take the afternoon off and I thought about it a lot.  I knew I needed to do something different but I needed the job.  I couldn't just quit.  Instead, I decided to take on a hobby that would force me to get in shape.  That is when I started taking Tae Kwon Do.  I am sure I was a funny sight.  A middle aged fat woman rolling around on the floor with a bunch of kids.  But a funny thing happened.  It turned out that I loved it.  There was something about the discipline of Tae Kwon Do that appealed to me.  I wasn't losing weight rapidly, because I wasn't dieting yet, but I started to get stronger and more coordinated.  I started feeling more confident.  About 6 months into the program, after I'd lost a little weight already, I decided to get serious about losing weight.  I got on the scale and weighed 238 pounds.  That is the highest number I've ever seen on a scale.

I don't remember what diet I went on at that time, but I do remember making a big chart and posting it on the changing room door at Tae Kwon Do.  The entire school could see my progress.  I'd mark it each week.  Everyone was cheering for me and they were incredibly supportive.  That's when I learned how much it helped me to be public about my struggles with my weight.  Everyone thought I was nuts.  They couldn't believe I would publicly post how much I weighed.  But I figured it didn't matter if they knew the number, because they saw me every day.  They knew I was overweight by looking at me.  The number on the scale didn't make me any fatter.  I got down to about 170 pounds.  But this incident was not as much about the weight loss as it was about how much Tae Kwon Do changed me. To this day I am more coordinated and fall less.  When I do fall, I fall with much more grace and skill.  As much as it hurt my body the next day, tumbling days were my favorite nights of the week.  I actually got good at jumping over large stacks of mats and diving into a front roll and ending up on my feet.  I was proud of my accomplishments on the mat.  It felt good.  I also learned how to communicate with my body in a way I had never been able to, before.  My two or three years of Tae Kwon Do gave me more confidence in myself than I had ever had before.  It was life changing.  It wasn't enough, I gained a lot of that weight back, eventually, but a seed was planted, even if it did go dormant for a while.

Pause.

OK, I've been wanting to do this for a while.  You know, put the whole story together.  Explain my mind set.  Talk about where I've been and why.  Try to piece it all together.  Problem is I start a post, it's too much, and I delete it.  So this time I'm going to do it differently.  I'm leaving this unfinished story up.  I will try to add to it, pick up where I left off, at least once a week.  Maybe when I'm done it will make a coherent story, maybe not.  We'll find out together.

Until next time...