What had changed was that the rock of my life then, that to which I’d been anchoring myself for almost four years of commitment and devotion, was slowly deteriorating. As I watched my partner spiral further and further into a dark, difficult abyss from which I wondered if emergence was even possible, I felt myself consumed with trying to hold dearly with white knuckles and clenched fingers to the life we'd built. It wasn’t working. I was holding onto weight alright—emotional, mental and physical and before I knew it I was sinking and drowning with lies, pain and loss stuffed like rocks into my pockets.
Losing weight has been a mastering of the mind for me. It has taken great focus, and dedication in order to relearn how to live, eat and move so that my body would match my desire to live. From June of 2009 to February of 2010, I probably lost all of ten pounds. I spent those eight months entirely focused on the health and well being of someone else. Two someone elses, in fact. I hadn’t a moment's reprieve to even remember that I had recently embarked on a weight loss journey myself. I was on a road that I believed would lead to a happier, healthier life, but for the moment I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, twiddling my thumbs on the edge of that lonely byway. Recently, I heard a piece of Buddhist wisdom that I found particularly relevant for this period in my life: “Roads are made for journeys, not destinations.”
My road from two hundred and eighty-seven pounds to one hundred and eighty-five pounds has certainly been journey, rather than destination focused. So many things factored in my ability and desire to lose weight, and each changed my path in such a way that I never could’ve mapped the course by which I traveled. This has been the greatest lesson. Life happens, it always has and it always will. We can try as we might to control, organize and plan our steps, but life will always happen. What we can do, and what I did, is make decisions that will make the journey more bearable and to trust in the power of pursuing our own happiness.
In July of 2009, my Mother was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. Therein lay a fork in my road, and this was one of the first places where my path began to change. Unsure of this diagnosis and without significant guidance from her doctor, my Mother was understandably bewildered as to how she would have to change her life in order to reach a point of good health again. Seeing my mother confused and perhaps a little afraid of the unknown drove me to a place where I had to sit down and learn about how food works, period. And it was not until I began slowly learning on my own, did I realize how little I knew, or rather, how little we all know.
After implementing a couple of diet changes for my Mother, I decided that as I was living with my parents at the time, I’d implement those changes to my own diet to help support and motivate her. Helping my Mother with this not only ended up significantly helping me, but it also gave me a distraction from the pieces of my life that were falling apart right in front of my eyes. This is where "dieting" became "changing my diet permanently." It was essential that my Mom be able to lose a little bit of weight, and to eat foods that were easier for a Type II Diabetic's body to process, in order for her to effectively reverse her diagnosis and be a healthier adult. What was our first lesson? That bread isn't the enemy, but that it likes to be paired with protein. What became our new favorite lunch? Brugger's whole-wheat bagels with peanut butter. That was the first step.
Helping my Mother with her diagnosis helped me to begin learning about how food is processed, and what we can eat that makes our bodies function and feel better. During that summer, we switched to whole-wheat and multi-grain breads almost one hundred percent of the time. We cut out dessert except for very special occasions, and the desserts we did eat if we were having a craving became a serving size of organic animal cookies, or a serving size of graham crackers. We always made sure our carbohydrates were balanced with lean protein. Arnold's Sandwich Thins became another staple, piled high with fibrous vegetables like shredded carrots, slices of cucumber, slivers of red peppers and micro green sprouts, lean turkey and just a slathering of light mayo. We became addicts for Kashi's Original Seven-Grain crackers, organic breakfast cereals with at least 6 grams of fiber, and the abundance of local fruits us lucky Clevelanders get to enjoy mid-July. Blueberries found their way atop bowls of Fiber One, raspberries and raw almonds made their way into tossed salads dressed lightly with olive-oil and vinegar based dressings, and we stopped eating yogurts that contained more than 10 grams of sugar per serving. We went Greek with our dairy, eating plain, 2% fat Greek yogurt with diced peaches and honey. We became vitamin guzzling, anti-oxidant rich, fiber consuming machines...and implementing these small changes a couple of times per week helped us both feel better and lose a little weight over those eight months.
By the time February of 2010 rolled around, I was reaching a breaking point. While my Mother and I had made some really great progress with our eating habits, I was not exercising regularly and still following my old routine of food consumption the majority of the time. My relationship was and had been essentially over in my heart. Because of how I had to handle and deal with that aspect of my life, I found myself under even more undue stress and anxiety within my family relationships. My body was on the brink of getting to a place where it could feel better, but I hadn't been able to push it over that hump. The train was spouting coal dust and puttering "I think I can," repeatedly as it chugged up that hill, but something had to change in order for it to reach the top. Fuel needed to be added to that fire, it needed to be stoked and I was the only one holding that heavy, iron rod.
On Fat Tuesday of that year, I stepped on the scale in the familiar green bathroom at the home of two people I used to know and love as my own family. The bobbing needle pointed two hundred and forty-five pounds at me. That was the last time I'd weigh myself on that scale, or set foot in that green bathroom. It was the last time I'd face the walls that were shaded with horrible memories from the hot summer before. Two days later, I broke. I ended the relationship I imagined would last forever. I took the reins of my life back, staring down the dark road before me, unsure of what would await at dawn. When morning finally broke, I found that I had a whole lot of time to focus on myself. I gave up dessert for Lent again to re inspire the ball I'd began to roll one year earlier. I began walking one and a half miles in the park every week day. I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan's book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual, and read it cover to cover in two hours. I picked myself up, put one foot in front of the other, and never looked back.
November 2009
December 2009
February 2010
And a special thanks to Anna Zimmerman for always taking photos of me. I'd have no way of sharing pictures with the world if you hadn't been snapping them for me.
You are welcome. I'm so glad you shared your story on here. And I'm so glad I'm reading it all. now.
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