At that point I basically stopped caring about my weight and resigned myself to being overweight. I tried going back to UNM in the spring of 2015, but ended up having to drop all but one class because I was failing them all. I started a new job in March of last year working for at a dry cleaners. I've been there for a little over a year now. I continued to struggle with severe depression to the point that I was suicidal and cutting again. The binge eating and bulimia also continued and my weight spiked again back up into the 320's.
And that brings us to the present. I returned to college this past spring at my local community college and for the first time since graduating high school, I was actually very successful. I passed all five of my classes with straight A's and really enjoyed myself. I found that I was a much happier person and I think I went through a lot of mental and emotional changes. I stopped getting so down on myself and stopped caring so much what people think of me. There are a lot of days that I look in the mirror and think, Hey, looking good, girl! I'm not stupid, I know that I'm still morbidly obese, I know that by society's standards I look like crap, but I'm learning to be comfortable in my own body, to put more stock in the words of those who love me than those who don't. Honestly, if someone started talking bad about me, rather than getting depressed and feeling worthless now, I'd be more inclined to flip them off and tell them to shut up. Um, just to be clear, I don't go around flipping people off, but in that situation, it would be very tempting. If I was a better person, I would ignore them and move along, but I'm really bad at being passive and ignoring things that piss me off. As my best friend recently commented, I'm not an indecisive or passive person at all. I can be very passionate which means that sometimes I react or say things without thinking it through. Something else to work at, I guess...
Moving on though, my eating habits stayed pretty bad up until the last month or two. At that point I started really working to eat three meals a day rather than just snacking and then having a huge, unhealthy meal. I started buying breakfast bowls at Walmart and panini sandwiches for my lunch. For dinner though I would typically get Dion's or Lotaburger or something along those lines. So I was doing better overall, but I still wasn't eating very healthy as I found out when I checked out the nutrition panel on the back of my breakfasts and lunches last week. And I was still spending a fair amount of money eating out. However, I was still doing better than I had in the past and that combined with doing a fair amount of walking with classes and work meant that I actually started losing weight though I didn't realize it at the time.
I stopped weighing myself over a year ago. It was just too depressing to see the numbers on the scale increasing or staying the same. I deluded myself into thinking that if I didn't see the numbers, then it didn't exist. Pity that doesn't work. In any case, a couple weeks ago I decided to weigh myself for the heck of it. Might as well face reality, you know? I knew I was going to at least still be in the 320's but I was honestly afraid that I was going to be even heavier. So I weighed myself and...308 lbs. Hold up, wait a minute, that can't be right. Let me try this again. 308 lbs. Okay, that's it, this thing has to be broken. One more time. 308 lbs. No way... Fourth time's the charm. 308 lbs. Well, okay then.
To say the least, I was shocked. I didn't think I had changed anything in my lifestyle enough to really make a difference, but evidently I was wrong. Last week I had to use a medical scale, you know where you adjust the scale yourself, for my biology lab. Clothes, shoes and all, I weighed in at 304 lbs. Shocked again.
I think maybe that was the catalyst for my decision to actually really start working to lose weight again. So this past Sunday my mom and I went over to the Defined Fitness by my house and we got signed up. On Monday I met with one of the managers for a kind of orientation and he ended up encouraging me to see about getting a personal trainer. So I scheduled a session with a trainer for the following day before my classes and I ended up loving her. I've never had a personal trainer before, but she was really awesome and fun to work with. So I now have a personal trainer that I'll meet with twice a week for the foreseeable future.
I also attended one of their group classes, Yoga, Tuesday night after my classes and really enjoyed it. I definitely got a work out and I liked the instructor. Despite my weight, I'm actually fairly flexible, so I enjoy yoga because I feel like it's something that I'm actually okay at. That's not to say that it's easy, cause it's definitely not, but the fact that none of the poses felt impossible is kinda awesome to me.
Wednesday I got paid so I turned to my trusty Pinterest boards and started looking up healthy snacks and breakfast and lunch ideas and then promptly went and blew about half my paycheck at Sprouts. But I found some really great stuff there, seriously, I love their bulk section. I made my own trail mix which I think is way healthier than any pre-made stuff with all kinds of nuts and seeds and some dried fruit. By the way, dried dates are kinda awesome. I'd never tried them before but the recipe I used called for them and I really enjoyed their flavor. I also got fruit to make parfaits for breakfast. Sadly my own look nothing like the beautiful creations in the picture, but they still taste pretty good. I also got ingredients to make a farro salad and basically a fancy French tuna sandwich. I grabbed some low sodium turkey and whole wheat tortillas to make wraps for lunches and I was set!
So this morning ended up being my first day really working to eat healthy. I had one of my parfaits for breakfast, or part of it really. The strawberries I used were a bit tart and ended up making me feel slightly sick so I didn't eat the whole thing. My trail mix though which I ate during my biology lecture was fantastic. I really enjoyed it and it definitely kept me full till after my lecture when I had time to eat my wrap which was amazing. Not even kidding. Two and half slices of turkey, one and a half slices of cheese, some sprouts, sliced cucumber and tomato, and just a little bit of horseradish mustard. Taste nirvana.
I didn't work out today. I was feeling really tired and had a bit of a headache, but since I plan on working out every day for the rest of the week, I wasn't too worried if I missed the one day. But shame on me, I wasn't feeling hungry earlier so I haven't eaten since lunch and now it's 10:30. Whoops! I'm not getting super stressed about it though, I know that won't change anything. I figure I'll get a snack, maybe finish the last of my parfait or something and just make sure that I do better tomorrow!
So, my biggest goal at this point is just to make things so that I can succeed. With the exercise, I just really want to work to make sure that I'm getting to the gym at least five days of the week. Since Defined has so many cool sounding group classes, I don't think that's going to be a huge problem, but I'll definitely have to be careful that I don't get lazy.
With food, my goal is just to eat three meals a day with snacks in between and only eat out on Saturdays when my best friend and I get together. I'm not going to put myself on a strict diet or start counting calories. Those things have never worked for me in the past and have just served to really to discourage me. I'm not good at really limiting what foods I can eat and if I fall off the wagon, I get really frustrated. I want to make sure that I'm cooking my meals and I'm trying to keep them really simple, but full of flavor. I don't really feel like spending all day trying to prepare meals for the week so recipes that make multiple servings are going to be my best friends.
I also just want to work at being my own cheerleader. I definitely want to work to be healthier, but if I fall off the wagon, I don't want to be beating myself up. I really just want to work at accepting the fact that, yes, I screwed up, but it's not the end of the world, and there's always tomorrow. I think if I can keep that in mind, I'll be golden.
My long-term goal is to get down to somewhere between 130 and 145 lbs. That number seems really daunting right now so I'm not focusing on it. My short term goal is just to get below 300 lbs and stay below 300 lbs. I don't know how often I'm going to weigh, but I'd like to shoot for at least once every two or so weeks. I don't want to be chained to the scale and the numbers I see there. I'm not in a rush and I want to do this so that I stick with it instead of giving up.
This is the last day I am this fat and unhealthy. Repeat Everyday.
You're awesome, Morgan. Great job!
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