Breaking up is hard to do.
9:20 AM
You have ups and downs, but you can't imagine your life without them. Sure, they can make you feel horrible about yourself. A mess. A failure. And what they say about you can affect the way others see you, too. They can also make you feel like you can move mountains. You're a winner. You can be the person everyone wants you to be. It's so easy to become attached to them. You think about them day and night. Every decision you make goes back to what they will say. You start to live for them, and your own self-worth falls by the wayside. Many of us live huge chunks of our lives in this toxic relationship. I've been walking the tightrope myself for as long as I can remember. In August I decided to cut ties and make my life about me again. I needed to be free. I deserved to be the only voice in my head telling me how to live, what to eat, how worthy I am of love.
So I broke up with my scale.
When I was in my late teens I decided that I was sick of being fat. I had been overweight my entire life, and no one I knew ever let me forget it. My parents meant well when they signed me up for Weight Watchers and bought me exercise clothes for Christmas, but it felt like a punch in the gut. I wanted people to see something besides "fat girl" when they looked at me. I started counting calories and working out. Things quickly spiraled out of control. I was eating under 500 calories a day while staying up on my mom's elliptical trainer all night with a heart rate monitor strapped to my chest. I made sure I burned off at least twice what I ate the day before.
Everyone loves a chubby baby. As you grow? Not so much.
I lost 75lbs in three months. Everyone told me how great I looked. Great job! You're amazing! How did you do it? The praise was new for me, and it was addictive. No one in my family knew how I had actually lost the weight. No one knew that I was killing myself to be thin. At my lowest point I was in a children's size medium skirt. I'm 5'9" tall.
Right before my wedding in 2009, my favorite cat died. Losing a pet is always heartbreaking, but this cat was my best friend. My family moved a lot while I was growing up, and my social skills are sorely lacking. When she died I turned to food for comfort. It only took 5 months to put all of the weight that I had lost back on. One month after I gained everything back, I got pregnant with my oldest child.
I traded in the extreme calorie restriction and over-exercising for binge eating. I could put away gallons of ice cream, whole bags of chips, three helpings at meals. I never felt hungry but I always felt hungry. Nothing could fill me. At my highest weight I was 260lbs and miserable. I weighed myself every day. The number was always about the same. The depression that hit when the red numbers flashed up at me was unbearable. The only way I could make myself feel better was with more food. So I ate. I ate everything. And I felt horrible.
40lbs down in my late teens. I have no idea what this pose is supposed to be.
Last month my husband had a physical and found out that his cholesterol was dangerously high. He was put on medication and felt terrible about himself. I was beginning to see signs of depression in him and I didn't want him to fall into the hole that I have lived in alone for so long. I went on FaceBook to get contact information from a friend of a friend who said he could recommend a good local therapist. While online, I saw another friend post about Whole30. She looked incredible, felt incredible, and made the whole thing sound like a miracle. We have tried diets before and always failed, but this wasn't a diet. This was a lifestyle. I looked up Whole30 and sent my husband links. We decided to do it together.
I lost about 15lbs that first month. I felt incredible. The weight was melting off, and I had yet to start exercising. One morning when I was weighing in (which I did daily and is completely against Whole30 rules) I saw that I had gained 3lbs since the day before. I felt panic start to set in. My mind immediately went to my heart rate monitor from ten years ago sitting in a storage unit across town. I wondered if my husband could go grab it for me after work so I could start working out. I thought about making an account on my old calorie counting website. I wrote down how many calories I'd need to eat/burn to lose more weight. Then my four year old son asked me what I was doing. I cried.
September 2016 progress photo
This is something that I need to do for my health, not to change my size. I want to be strong. I want to be fast. I want to be happy. I want to take care of myself. I want to do things that make me happy. I want to do things that make me feel good about myself. My worth can't be tied to a number, but that's exactly how I have operated for the majority of my life. It needs to stop NOW.
I created this blog to chronicle my self-care journey. I want to eat healthy food FOR ME. I want to become strong FOR ME. I want to become fast FOR ME. I want to paint my nails, read a book, watch makeup tutorials on YouTube FOR ME. Knowing my weight does absolutely nothing positive for myself, and if something isn't positive I don't have the space in my world for it.
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