06/09/2015- Changes I've made.

carimiller7391

Good morning ladies and gents..... Hope everyone is well. Today I've decided to try something new. For today, list some changes you've made. Be them food, activity, decided to start dating again, started looking people in the eyes when passing them.... Anything new to you that was foreign due to your weight. How you think your weight held you back and how you changed. I'd love to hear/read what everyone is doing differently.

For me, I've made a few changes. I've found myself smiling at people more often and being able to make eye contact also. My food choices are changing.... SLOWLY, but are changing. I also put myself out there on a dating site and met my wonderful boyfriend Reggie. I've also found out who is truly in my corner when it comes to me getting healthy and who truly wants to keep me "sick".... and that was eye opening. I feel my parents are both my biggest cheerleaders and biggest sabatours in my weight loss journey. They tell me how well I am doing, but know that I have the hardest time with carbs (switching over to the LCHFMP way of eating) and they keep JUNK and I mean JUNK being brought into the house. They promised me that after my surgery that they would change their eating habits also. My mom is obese also. Not as large as I am, but about 60 lbs over weight. And let me rat them out, mini candy bars, donuts, cakes, pies, processed foods, cookies, you name it... they eat it. Now my dad is under weight. (HA don't I wish).... he actually looks a bit unhealthy, but he is getting older and has lost a huge amount of muscle due to being hospitalized for 30 days in the ICU a few years ago. I am hoping that as they see me getting healthier, they adopt my new way of eating also. I'd like them to be around a long time still. My best friend Robyn, huge support. She asks me often to go to Zumba or some type of class with her. I'm giving myself another week on the back pills that Carly suggested (they are helping so much) and then plan on going back to Zumba. Reggie is my biggest supporter. When we first met, he didn't say anything about my food choices or my eating. I've given him the green light to talk to me (not police me) about my food choices. Remind me why I am getting healthy. I do the same for him. We've made the concious decision to stop going out to eat...even though I can do better at LCHFMP eating out.

Ramblings over.....

KarenZen

Cari, this is such a good post! I think sometimes we rely on the scale as the "real" measure of our progress and don't look at all the other victories that are happening!

My biggest change so far has been to redefine myself as an athlete. I never was one as a kid, and then as an adult, I always felt I was too obese to be an athlete, even though I was climbing mountains and biking and swimming for miles. Then I read the word "fathlete" and fell in love. Yup. Fat athlete. That's me. Now, I'm thinking of dropping the f. I swim like a fish, and I've been told over and over by strangers at the YMCA, "Wow! You are such a beautiful, graceful swimmer." I think it's time for me to embrace those words fully and embrace my new identity.

The second change goes hand in hand with the first. As an athlete, I need to fuel my body in a healthy way, to treat it as a fine instrument, to give it the rest it needs, the water it needs, the stretching it needs--all of the self-care that I've been missing as I just abused my body by eating junk and ignoring the signals that I was killing my body.

So even though when I look in the mirror, I still see an obese woman, I'm also seeing a strong inner athlete who needs nurturing and who is ready to train for the next swim race. I like this woman!

K.

KnitOrMiss

Reaching way back, when I first started living my life for myself again - it was triggered by my ex-husband's selfishness. I was going to therapy to try to find balance and improve my marriage. He simply wasn't interested. Not too many years after, he asked for a divorce. Somewhere along the way:

• I decided that while I loved my daughter more than anything else in this world that if I didn't focus on loving myself and treating myself right, I was setting the worst possible example for the type of adult I hoped for her sake that she'd become - and so I had to change.
• I realized that I went from being my parents' child to my sibling's sibling to someone's friend to someone's girlfriend to someone's wife to someone's mother without ever figuring out who ME was... I had no idea who I was or wanted to be. So I spent some time in that head for a while.
• I finally started putting myself first.
• I put my foot down and told my then husband that I didn't even care what he wanted anymore (he strung out the divorce filing for 4 years due to money and all kinds of nonsense), that I was DONE and wanted out. Period. After begging and pleading and all manner of crap, he finally agreed, though I ended up having to pay to finish it and take less back support than owed to get him to agree to everything in reasonable time. I couldn't stand it anymore, and any cost was worth regaining my freedom.
• My daughter and I started a health adventure together. It was the beginning of everything.
• I showed my daughter that I had to be true to me and start putting myself first. Her dad continued to worship her and buy her affection (and turned her completely against me). She now lives with him and wants nothing to do with me. But, I can live without because I don't want her love and affection if it is contingent on playing some game. I have faith that some day she will grow up and figure out that everything I ever did was out of love for her. She'll either accept it or move on, but I won't live my life anymore waiting for someone to love me. I kept reaching out, and I kept getting ignored or backlash. Done. (There is a lot more too this one, but I don't want to go into much more detail
• I joined some organizations to share myself. I ended up giving all I had away and keeping nothing to nourish myself. I quit all of those things at the end of term.
• I spent over a year focusing on my own health. I spent a lot of time in my own head. I realized that if I didn't figure things out, I was stuck where I was. And I didn't like that place.
• I finally listened to my doctors (after straightening my head out) and started low carbing it.
• I bought things for myself as a priority over other items for others (which had always been automatic to me).
• I started seeing things as possible.
• I started loving myself.
• I started appreciating myself.
• I forgave myself - for everything, being a doormat, losing things I thought meant more than life itself, for getting fat, for destroying my health, for not loving myself enough, for all of it!!!
• I started seeking out treatment for a huge number of major health issues, despite cost and inconvenience.
• I made the decision that sometimes I have to do what's smart and not what I want to do.

That's not all in order, and I'm sure I missed a ton, but that's what I've got for now. It took almost a decade for some of this major change to evolve, and it took less than a few days or weeks. So I guess these are the highlights....

maoribadger

Errrrrrrrrr

Ok well the big one this time is my decision that I have to lose weight the way I want to maintain my weight. No nimrod diets, no stupid decisions. Sensible eating, sensible cals. I have also made exercise an integral part of my routine. I am also trying to make steps to deal with my dodgy food habits, if somewhat sporadically