Renewed Commitment to Health

robingmurphy

When I was 19, I found myself becoming overweight. And I hated it. I hated how sluggish my body felt, I hated how it looked on me, and I hated the diminished health prospects I would have as I got older. But most of all I hated that I was quickly becoming one of those women who complained about her weight, but never did anything to fix it. I could learn to deal with being fat, but I wouldn’t learn to deal with being a whiner. So I decided that I would either commit to just accepting that I would be overweight the rest of my life and being okay with that, or I would commit to fixing it. I spent a couple weeks thinking about this, because I realized that either decision I made would shape the rest of my life. I eventually decided I would commit to fixing it. I started running, I started educating myself about health, fitness,nutrition, and learning to cook, and I started teaching myself to like vegetables. This was not easy because before that I was notorious for not liking any green foods. This decision revolutionized my life. Some of the things that are a big part of my identity now and that I love most came from that decision. I love to cook healthy meals, I love to exercise, I love learning about nutrition, and I love almost all vegetables. I even love goddamn kale (though I hated it when I first ate it) and look forward to eating it multiple times a week.

Over years I slowly changed how I ate (turns out, cheese fries cannot be the primary basis of a healthy diet) and started integrating exercise, and it took years to get there, but I’ve maintained my weight in the healthy range since then. However, in the last few years in dealing with raising children, work stress, and other life stress, I have found myself increasingly not treating health and fitness as a top priority, and my weight has been creeping up, and even increasing into the officially overweight category. I’ve realized that I’ve been failing to keep that commitment I made to myself when I was nineteen. Even worse, I've been bitching and moaning about the extra pounds and have been that woman who complains about her weight and doesn't fix it. I'm drawing a line in the sand and that is going to change. Going forward, I’m renewing my commitment to make health, fitness, nutrition, and maintaining a healthy weight among my top priorities consistently for the rest of my life.