Moving In The Right Direction

brattazz

From Brattazz in VT:

I started down this road, not less traveled, 4 years before my father passed away.

My father was getting ready to retire from his job at a college and had arranged for me to continue school even after he retired. My wife and I figured out a way to make it by over the next 4 years, it was tough.

I reach a major low this summer, over the last 10 years I had gone from a health, active, 180 pound person who loved life, took advantage of every opportunity to do something new and be outdoors. To an over weight, depressed, person who just wanted to stay home and watch TV. I did not know who I was anymore or if I really wanted to live. I would not say I was suicidal, as I did not actually think of ways to kill myself. I just thought that my friends and family would be better off without me.

I hadveeen in and out of the hospital over the previous 5 years with some bad bouts of cellulites. Two years ago I had a bout while I was on vacation, maybe the worst one I had ever had. As, we had just flown for 5 hours. During that flight I had a fever and passed out multiple times. It scared the heck out of my wife and myself.

Back to this summer. I hit 270 pounds and started to feel like my life was getting out of control. I could not control my emotions at work as well as I could in the past.

I did start to eat less but, was not to the point that I was motivated to be physical. Then late this summer we had a party and a friend of mine took my blood sugar as he was worried I was becoming a diabetic. It was 240 fasting. It hit me, holly ...., I am in bigger trouble then I thought.

I went to my doctor and he said I was diabetic. I actually said to myself, this is great. There are so many services I can take advantage of to fix myself now. My doctor and I had identified a program that not only addressed the nutritional aspects that I needed to fix but, the physical ones. The class started in November 2009.

Knowing that the first two months were going to be the toughest for me as, I was going on vacation and we had three major holidays, I worked with the instructor to push to make sure I had a plan of attack. This was much easier then I thought it would be.
It all came down to visualization.

Before I would go somewhere, I took a moment to think about what it was going to look like. If we were going to a buffet, I would think about what it would look like and how I could eat healthy while still taking advantage to the foods I really like. I took some practice but, I do much better now when I am put in situations where I would have previously over eaten or drank.

As I mentioned, the program I am doing includes a physical aspect. The program has its own gym and I am now in that gym for at least an hour 6 times a week and I am looking for a way to get in another hour some how.

It took some doing to find the time to get to the gym. I needed to change my sleep pattern to make this happen. I now get up about 5 am, go to work for about an hour, then go to the gym and back to work. This is working well for me and I hope to use this to get myself back to swimming competitively.

I am happy to report that I am down 20 pounds since the end of September and actually now working on getting running into my morning routine instead of just walking.

My Fitness Pal has made it so much easier for me to track the critical aspects to weight loss and I hope soon, weight maintenance.

The energy that I have now has helped me coupe with the stress at work. I am feeling much better about myself, in controle of my emotions and now I am on the verge of being able to do the activities I had done a decade ago.

I am so happy.

bettersusan

Good job! Good for you! You are doing all the right things. Stick to doing what you KNOW is right.

Susan


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debmac63

Congrats on the weight loss so far...I'm glad you you're on this path now and going in the right direction. Stick with MFP and you'll reach your goals!