Sweat, Tears, and the Sea: Three Years of MFP

ILiftHeavyAcrylics · February 2014

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." --Isaac Dinesen

This is me now, the way you all know me:

But I haven't always been like this.

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of my first MFP login. Some days I don’t even feel like the same person that I was then. For one thing, I was heavy. But that’s not the biggest part of the change I’ve undergone. I was sickly and weak then, and I felt that on a fundamental level my body had failed and betrayed me.

I got sick when I was 16. That’s a long and complicated story in and of itself. But in the end I was diagnosed with lupus, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and chronic migraine. I was a high school art teacher for awhile but eventually I was too ill to continue. I spent my last 6 months as a teacher struggling to make it to work more than 3 days per week. I couldn’t drag myself out of bed. I was taking a LOT of very powerful medications. I couldn’t walk without a cane. It was bad. And I gained probably 20 lbs.

I got married in January of 2011. It was a very quick affair—we drove out to the middle-of-nowhere and a justice of the peace performed the ceremony at her house. Later that day, she uploaded pictures of us to Facebook. Normally when there were pictures of me I would crop out my lower half. I was kind of in denial about how big I’d gotten. I’d always just tell myself it was a bad picture or a bad angle and pick something more flattering. But something clicked when I saw those unapproved and unedited pictures on my Facebook page. The next day I started trying to lose weight, and a couple of weeks later I joined MFP.
Here I am “before.” I wish I had taken some official before pictures. The photo on the right is the only surviving picture from my highest weight of 170 lbs (at 5'4"). The two on the left were after I had lost about 10 lbs.

At first I just counted calories. I didn’t do any exercise. If I made it out of bed it was a good day. But I lost weight. Over the next 2 years I lost 45 lbs. I didn’t do it all at once. I’d lose a chunk, then stop for awhile, and then come back to lose some more. Somewhere along the way I started to walk a bit. I’d walk for 20 minutes and be wiped out. But the more weight I lost, the better I felt. After my job ended it was even better.

Eventually I started doing pilates as well to build up strength in my pitifully weak limbs. I started to notice success stories here in the forums that involved changing body composition by lifting weights. The women in those threads were so strong and badass, and all I could think was that I wanted that. It took awhile to get my doctor’s approval to start. I finally got it about this time last year. I loved lifting from the moment I touched the barbell. It made me feel like a super hero. For the first time in my life I felt in control of my body. And my body responded. A few months later I even managed to start running, which is such a foreign concept to me that I thought at first I must have slipped into a parallel dimension. Better still, over the past 3 years I’ve cut my medications on the whole by 60%. I’ve cut down on pain medicine alone by 40%. I no longer have active lupus. And I’ve been able to go back to work 3 days per week without needing the crash as soon as I get home.

I still have to be careful. Too much activity still triggers flare-ups for me and I’ll often find myself needing to take a week or more to recuperate from pushing myself too hard. Finding balance is probably the biggest challenge I now face. But I’m still learning, still making progress, and still incredibly grateful for MFP.

What I learned along the way:
1. I am capable of more than I would have imagined.
2. Faster isn’t always better. I took the slow route, and it gave me a chance to develop the habits that have kept me in maintenance for more than year without backsliding.
3. Resistance train NOW. I’m recomping because I lost a good bit of muscle while I was dieting without exercise. Trust me when I tell you that it’s very hard to build back muscle once you’ve lost it.
4. The battle is mental as well as physical. Losing weight alone won’t cure your body image issues or your food issues. It won’t make you a happier person, although it can certainly be a component of that. Don’t neglect the psychological aspect of all of this. I’ve got a right to be happy, but I have to do the heavy lifting (ha!) to get myself there. My MFP friends have helped me and inspired me, but I can’t depend only on them for that. Most of it has to begin and end with me.
5. Take photos from the beginning. Aside from not resistance training from the beginning, not having before pictures is my biggest regret.
6. Focus on more than the scale. The scale is ONE measure of success, but it’s not the only or even most important one.
7. Losing weight doesn't have to be torture. I never cut out any food groups. The only foods I no longer eat are the ones that aren't worth the calories to me. I don't have to eat rabbit food or do hours and hours of an exercise I hate to make progress. Eat food you enjoy. Do exercise you enjoy. The best plan is the one with which you can stick long term.

I love my life now. Not because I've lost weight, but because I feel healthy again, at least most of the time. I don't need a cane at the grocery store. I can walk on the beach without needing to rest every 10 minutes. I spend less time trying to decide whether I'll be able to do things, and more time actually doing them. I couldn't go back to the way things were before. The only option for me is to keep moving forward toward whatever is just over the horizon.

This was a blog entry this morning but several friends requested that I make it a thread so here goes. I appreciate all the kind responses I have gotten so far.