ThoughtsCategory Archives

A New Day & A New Attitude

Wow, what a difference a couple of days can make in one’s attitude. I’m feeling SO much better today vs. a couple of days ago when I wrote my Fear, Loathing, & Secrets post. I can’t help but think that a lot of it is just putting my story out there and letting go of a lot internal demons that hold me back. I’m not saying I’ll be perfect by any stretch as I move forward in this process, but I truly believe things can only get better now.

So, where do I go from here? I’m back on track with my eating, so now it’s time to get my exercise back on track as well. The pulmonologist told me during my visit last week that once I had two days completely cough-free that I could return to gentle exercise. If that goes well with no return of the coughing for about a week, then I can get back to more strenuous forms of exercise.

Monday marked two days cough-free for me. I have gone out for a couple of quick walks on my lunch hour, but not even anything to the point that I would consider it exercise. It’s time to rectify that.

I’m signed up for the Walk MS event in my area on Saturday. As long as the weather holds up and it doesn’t rain, I’m going to attempt to do the walk. It’s only two miles, so I think I should be OK even though I’ve not done any real exercise in more than six weeks. It’s definitely not a competitive walking event, so I can even just stroll if I need to in order to finish.

My goal for next week is to get in at least four (4) workouts of 30 minutes or more. I need to sit down with my calendar this weekend and decide which days will work best to accomplish this goal. Once I get in a couple of weeks with at least four, then I’ll bump it up to five per week.

So, that’s my plan! Until next time …

7 April 2011

Thoughts

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Moving On, New Attitude, Plan, Workouts

Fear, Loathing, & Secrets

Even though there are no photos in my post, this may very well be my most Exposed post yet. It’s long and emotional, so if you’ve no interest in that sort of thing, please feel free to come back tomorrow when I’ll be back to my typical lighter blog post fare.

I’ve lived most of my life with a couple of very close “neighbors” in my head, Fear and Loathing. No, they aren’t people, but they’ve each metaphorically carried the weight of a person on me. As a result, I literally ended up with the weight of nearly two extra people on my body. They are the result of the secrets I let dominate the first 2/3rds of my life, and, as we all know, nothing good ever comes from painful secrets.

I’m an incest survivor. The abuse started when I was in kindergarten and continued for nearly 10 years. I never told anyone when it was happening. I lived in fear that if anyone found out, they would blame me. I feared they would think that it was somehow my fault. I feared no one would believe me since I came from a devoutly religious family and things like that don’t happen in religious families, right? So, instead, I started living a lie and living in fear.

At the same time, however, I began acting out. In retrospect, I know it was my unconscious self crying out for someone to realize something in my life was wrong, so horribly wrong. I started smoking when I was twelve. I started stealing money from my grandparents to buy cigarettes. I started drinking when I was 14. I started sneaking food and binge eating at 15, then took up running to compensate for it. I started doing drugs when I was 17. By the time I was a sophomore in college, I was blacking out from drugs and drinking. This is around the time when Loathing first came to call.

It was also during my college years that I began practicing the dangerous act of purging instead of running to counteract the binge eating. I have very distinct memories of sitting in my dorm room stuffing down multiple boxes of snack cakes and cookies whenever I would relive the memories of my abuse. There was just never enough food I could shove down my throat the stuff those feelings away though. In the end, I would purge to keep my weight in check which resulted in even more loathing over how I was treating my body. It was such a vicious cycle that I was seemingly powerless at the time to change.

Thankfully, with age, I also gained a bit of wisdom. I realized by the time I was in my mid-twenties that these behaviors weren’t doing me any favors. The last time I did drugs was on March 1, 1991, so I’ve been clean for just over 20 years now. I’m not going to lie and say I’ve never had a drink since, because I have. The difference though is that I’m no longer drinking to numb the pain of my memories. I still struggle with the food issues. I sought out treatment for my eating disorder and stopped purging, but have never really gotten the binge eating under control they way I would like which is how I ended up over 300 pounds. It’s definitely a lot better than it was, but I still battle the binge eating demons at times, especially when the flashback memories creep into my thoughts.

I finally got the courage about 13 years ago to tell my mother what had happened to me. My abuser denied my allegations and insisted I was just a liar who couldn’t be trusted. My parents chose to bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing ever happened. This was the beginning of the end of the relationship between me and most of my family. Even though I was no longer living with Fear, it took my relationship with Loathing to a whole new level. I started to hate myself thinking if I had just kept quiet that none of the turmoil going on would be happening. Of course, that was just another lie. Yes, the turmoil within my family would have been less, but the turmoil within myself was already at a breaking point and I just couldn’t go on that way. Rather than blaming myself for the end of the relationship, it’s (past) time for me to recognize that THEY are the ones choosing to continue living in denial.

Prior to finally telling my mother what had happened to me, I had been in a severe depression as I began reliving the trauma memories more and more. I attempted suicide on two occasions, but wasn’t successful either time (obviously). I underwent intensive therapy to help me deal with not just the memories, but the lifetime of trauma I had been going through up to that point. It was going through this therapeutic process that helped me realize I needed to tell my parents and I needed to confront my abuser.

Did therapy make the memories go away? No, but it did lessen their impact on my life. I no longer live in a constant state of anxiety and depression, nor do I have suicidal ideations anymore. Unfortunately, I do still live with the intermittent recurring nightmares that awaken me in a panic several times per year. I still live with the fact that my relationship with my family is virtually non-existent over this whole situation. I still live with the self-loathing tendencies of questioning what I did to deserve this cross to bear. Yes, I intellectually know this is ALL on my abuser, but there’s still that little five year old girl within me wondering why.

Yes, it sucks no longer having a relationship with my family. Holidays and birthdays are the the most difficult. However, I feel very fortunate to have an incredible circle of friends who know about my situation and always check in on me to make sure I’m doing OK emotionally on those days. They really have become my surrogate family and I love them all dearly.

I honestly don’t know what’s prompted me to write this post tonight. I don’t even guarantee that it will be public forever. I may wake up in the morning and wonder what the fuck I was thinking and pull it right then and there. For right now though, I just needed to write it and I needed to share it. I needed people to know where I’m coming from and what led me to the point that at one time in my life I was nearly 350 pounds. I needed people to know why I can be doing so seemingly well and then just go completely off track and struggle so hard to find my way back. I just needed to get the secrets out so that Fear and Loathing know they don’t have a room in my house anymore.

I’ll end this by saying I know I should be posting a food photo and journal to keep my 100 Day Chip Quest challenge going, but I’m not going to do it. Even though it means breaking my streak, this post is more for my mental well-being and I just need to let it stand on its own.

Until next time …

5 April 2011

What It's All About

Those of you who follow me on Twitter already know that I’m a major fan of Enell sports bras. They are a little piece of heaven here on earth for those of us with … *ahem* … larger chests. Are they the prettiest sports bra around? Not by a long shot. I lovingly refer to my Enell bras as my iron-clad Gladiator bras. BUT, they definitely keep the “girls” firmly in place no matter what type of activity I’m doing, and that’s all I care about!

Anyway, I recently noticed on their website, they are running a new campaign called Support for Life. In their words, it’s not about making a New Year Resolution, but a New Life Resolution. I love that so much! They encourage people to take a pledge to not just change for the new year, but to change their life. In return for taking the pledge, Enell is sending out a free t-shirt to everyone who signs up.

I immediately took the pledge after seeing it, and my t-shirt arrived yesterday. I think it’s just awesome! I love the message printed on it because it sums up exactly how I feel about my journey these days.

Front:

Back:

So, I just wanted to send a shout-out to the fine folks at Enell not only for supporting my “girls” so well, but for reminding me that this journey is all about making a better life for myself and not about reaching some magical number on the scale. You guys ROCK!

Disclosure: This is a completely unsolicited testimonial from an extremely happy customer.

Until next time …

3 February 2011

Misc., Thoughts

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Enell, Motivation, Support

Interested or Committed?

It’s time for my next installment from the “100 Days of Weight Loss” book. This is from day 2 which is titled, “Interested or Committed?”

The primary theme for this topic was ways to tell whether you are truly committed to your weight loss journey, or just somewhat interested in it. How can you tell in which category you fall?

Well, if are you merely interested in trying to lose weight, you’ll tend to stick with it only until you get bored, find something else you think will work better, until the scale stops moving, etc. In this stage, you seemingly have no willpower over more unhealthy food choices.

On the other hand, if you are truly committed to your new lifestyle, then you won’t let things distract you from your goals. You will stick with it no matter what. You don’t rely on seeing results on the scale to determine your success because you are committed to your new healthy lifestyle and know the scale will eventually catch up to your efforts.

This topic really hits home for me. I started my weight loss journey several years ago and went on to lose a total of 138 pounds. During that time, there was NOTHING I would let distract me from my goal. I stayed on program. I faithfully worked out 6 times per week. I tracked everything I ate. I drank a minimum of 80 oz of water daily. I definitely had set myself up for success by my actions.

I then faced a series of personal setbacks and started putting back on the weight. I would talk a good game about getting it off again, but I never had that same “no matter what” attitude as when I initially lost all the weight. I would let the smallest of things throw me off track and would use every excuse in the book as to why I wasn’t being successful.

What was different? I’m not really sure other than the fact that my head just wasn’t in the game. My weight loss just wasn’t the priority to me that it had been previously. I definitely see that I was more “interested” than “committed” to my journey during that time.

Even when I rejoined Weight Watchers back in September, I’m not sure I was truly committed to being on program again. I don’t think that “click” over to being committed came until I participated in the Exposed Movement. I know I keep bringing that up, but I really can’t express enough how deeply that whole experience changed me. It truly helped me look past the number on the scale, the cellulite, all the flawed imperfections of my physical body.

Following that, I was able to dig deep inside myself and find that person within who really WAS committed again to my health and weight loss journey. I knew she was still in there, I just had to find her again.

I crossed a bit of a milestone tonight on Twitter. I made my 10,000th tweet. I just happened to glance up at one point and noticed that I was at 9,998. Here is what followed:

@MelGetsFit: This is tweet 9999 … what should I say next for 10,000?! #pressuretobebrilliant
@MelGetsFit: Tweet 10,000: For what may be the first time in my adult life, I’m really starting to like the person I’m becoming! #changeisgood

As I said to @JewliaGoulia during the subsequent round of congratulatory tweets, “Self-acceptance and love is a beautiful thing.” Do you love and accept yourself just as you are today? If not, you should! The number on the scale is just that, a number. @SeeSaraRun said to me last week, “The scale measures only your weight, not your self-worth!” I love this so much and have thought of it many times this week. Thank you, Sara!

So, are you committed to your health/weight loss journey, or are you just interested? Decide how you will stick to your goals no matter what! Pick out something you can do for yourself today, even if it’s just ONE thing, to show yourself that you’re committed to your journey. For me, I’ll be drinking 96 oz. of water and taking a walk. Care to join me?

That’s it for day 2. I’ll be back next week with day 3 — Do It Anyway.

Until next time …

13 January 2011

I Used to Be That Way …

As I mentioned last week, one of my goals for 2011 is to work my way through the 100 Days of Weight Loss book. Given I work full-time+ and I’m going to school full-time now as well, covering a chapter per day just isn’t very realistic. My plan is to get in two chapters per week and blog about them as I go. This post is my first installment.

Day 1 – I used to be that way …

This chapter talks about the importance of changing the way you think. So many times when starting (or restarting) a weight loss journey, we listen to those old tapes in our head telling us we can’t do it, we’re just going to fail … again, that we aren’t worth the effort to make a change, etc. Instead, we need to realize that our past does NOT determine our future. Regardless of what may or may not have happened in the past, it has no bearing on NOW. This time is different!

Here are some of my old beliefs that I’ve let derail my weight loss efforts in the past:

I fear I’ll never reach my goal weight and will always be fat, so why bother?
I fear that even if I do reach my goal weight, I’ll end up regaining everything I lost and end up weighing more than when I started.
I fear that I’ll never be able to get my emotional eating under control.
I fear being hurt again by men so I use my weight to “protect” myself.

In an effort to reframe these old beliefs, I’ve come up with new endings which should result in new outcomes. Here are my modified beliefs:

I used to fear that I would never reach my goal weight, but now I know I CAN do it!
I used to fear that I’d end up regaining all the weight I’ve lost and end up weighing more than when I started, but now I know that won’t happen because instead of just going on a diet, I’m creating a new healthy lifestyle.
I used to fear that I would never be able to get my emotional eating under control, but now I know that my emotions (& food!) don’t control me.
I used to fear being hurt by men and used my weight to “protect” myself, but now I know I’m worthy of being loved by someone who will love me in return regardless of the number on the scale.

While working on reframing my beliefs, I was reminded of a couple of new personal mantras I’ve adopted recently. They are both from the amazing Sheryl who blogs over at *Bitch Cakes*. They both resonated so deeply with me after reading them that I wrote them on sticky notes. I keep them on my bathroom mirror as a daily reminder that *I* am in control of my journey.

Click to biggify

BTW, if you aren’t already reading her blog, you should! She’s an incredible Weight Watchers success story.

Ok, that’s it for Day 1. Stay tuned later in the week for Day 2, Interested or Committed?

Until next time …

11 January 2011

Thoughts

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*Bitch Cakes*, 100Days, Mantra, Weight Watchers

Exposed Movement Revisited

One of my most difficult posts to write in 2010, yet one I’m so proud of myself for doing, was my Exposed post. I really feel like that was a defining moment in my weight loss journey. It forced me to finally peel back many of the layers that I was hiding behind and let myself be exposed. After doing that, it just seemed like things really “clicked” for me and my weight loss really took off. I made that post on Oct. 15, and I’m down nearly 13 pounds since then which includes the big holiday season from Halloween to New Year.

In light of that, I’ve decided to revisit the Exposed Movement, but from a slightly different perspective this time. I’m exposing myself in the reality of where I am right now. What exactly does that mean? Well, I’ve always been notorious among my friends for my theory of “boobs and above” when it comes to photos. I never wanted my stomach showing because heaven-forbid someone should know exactly how fat I am. I always wanted people to think I was thin, or at least thinner and not the morbidly obese person that I am currently.

My first phase of this revisiting of exposing myself was by posting my actual weight on my blog. This was a HUGE step for me because in the past, only my closest friends were privy to that information. After I got used to doing that, I then got brave and actually posted a photo standing on the scale which gave it yet another layer of reality.

So, what’s the next logical step in this process? Yep, you guessed it. Photos! I have decided that I’m ready to start posting actual progress photos of myself. Part of my inspiration for this is seeing the amazing progress pics posted by Julia and Kenlie. It’s so awesome to see how far they’ve come captured photographically. More importantly than that though, is just the need to be honest not only with myself, but with you, my readers.

Before I jump right in with my before photo which was me at my all-time heaviest weight, I just have to say this is going to take on a double exposure of sorts. Even my closest friends that have seen my before photo, they’ve all seen a retouched version of it. At the time this photo was taken about 10 years ago, I was battling a severe depression as a result of PTSD which even included a period of hospitalization because I had begun cutting myself. I had a rather large scar on my leg from the cutting, so I’ve always touched up the photo to hide the scar because I was ashamed of what I had done. I’m finally reaching the point in my life that I am embracing the fact that all the things I’ve experienced, both good and bad, have molded me into the person I am today. So, with that having been said, here are both versions of my before photo which was taken when I was at 336.6 pounds. Note: you can click on any of the photos in this post to see a larger version.


Original	Retouched

Next, here is a photo of me in Sept. 2010 when I rejoined Weight Watchers. I was down 52 pounds from my heaviest weight. I was 284.2 pounds at the time this was taken:

Finally, here are photos I took of myself on January 2, 2011. My final weigh in for 2010 was 270.8 which puts me down 66 pounds from my heaviest weight.

Even though I still have a long way to go, I really feel like I’ve made amazing progress. The place where I can definitely see it the most is in my face. I can’t get over how much it has changed with my weight loss. I was about 7 or 8 pounds heavier in the picture on the right than I am right now. What a difference 60 pounds can make, right?!! Yeah, I know, the longer bangs help, too.

My goal is to continue taking these photos at the start of each new month from now until I reach my goal. I will also be adding a Progress Pics page that will appear in the navigational menu at the top of the page. So, you’ll always be able to find them there at any time rather than waiting for me to post them at the start of each new month.

Lastly, I thought I would share a few of my race pics from the 5k events and such that I’ve done. I’ve very rarely shared these with anyone because I generally HATE how I look in them. Now I’m working on reframing how I feel about them and focusing instead on the fact that I may not be at the weight I would like, but I’m out there and I’m doing it!

2007 Oceanside Turkey Trot (Thanksgiving Day):

2008 Surf City 5k (Feb. 3): Yes, I was as miserable as I look

2008 Knott’s Berry Farm Coaster Run (April 18}:

2008 Downtown Anaheim 5k (June 14):

2008 IronGirl Del Mar 5K (June 22):

2008 Virtual Lucy 5K (July 18}: This was a tribute race for an online triathlete friend in Florida who passed away unexpectedly. Approx. 200 of us from the Beginner Triathlete forums did this race to honor Lucy.

Now is the time you will see a gap in race photos. I only did a couple of really small races in 2009 and they didn’t provide photographers. The other couple of larger races I had scheduled that year were missed due to injury.

2010 Surf City 5K (Feb. 7):

2010 Rock n’ Roll San Diego (June 6):

I got to meet some amazing women from the Sisterhood as part of Team Shrinking Jeans for the San Diego race. Love these women so much!! As a team, we raised over $44,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. It was definitely one of my highlights and things I’m most proud of for 2010.