The Road to Now

A little over a year ago I decided to join Weight Watchers.  At the time I was pretty down in the dumps... my life had taken a weird turn over the previous 6 to 8 months.   I found myself unemployed (due to lay-offs), single, and at my highest weight ever (due to loving food? A lot?)... highest by a long shot.  As in, when I stood on that scale at the Weight Watchers meeting and finally had to confront how much I actually weighed, I was stunned.  I struggled to process that number... holy shit THAT NUMBER.  The best I could do was accept it and know that at least I was taking teeny-tiny baby steps to fix it.

This, however, is not a Weight Watchers success story. Unfortunately.

I diligently went to meetings and counted points and went on walks with my dog Henry for about 2 months, and I lost weight... about 15 lbs.  And then an atomic bomb hit my life.  My life and my family's life.  My brother passed away very suddenly at the age of 33 due to complications from diabetes.


In the feel-good movie version of life when someone dies it's supposed to inspire everyone to remember what's most important, live everyday like it's their last, take nothing for granted, grab life by the boot straps, climb every mountain,  and soar on eagle's wings.  Anyone who has ever lost someone knows this is total and utter bullshit.

My strongest instincts at the time were to fix everything... just FIX IT. FIX ALL THE THINGS.  I have a terrible habit of needing everyone to be happy all of the time, and if they aren't then I go into manic fix everything and make everyone okay mode.  It's super annoying for everyone involved.  But guess what?  I couldn't fix anything about the shitty situation everyone was in.  I couldn't do a goddamn thing.  It was awful.  It's awful to sit back and watch your parents struggle with the loss of their child.  It's awful to know that it's just you now, that someday when your parents are gone there will be no one to understand what you are going through. Sure, lots of people have lost parents, but no one else on the face of the planet knows what it's like to lose THESE parents.

And in the midst of all of this turmoil and upheaval, things like my weight and my health didn't seem like the biggest fish I had to fry.    Honestly, the months of December 2010 to April 2011 are kind of a blur in a lot of ways, but around May of this year I finally started to find myself again. 

Me. The annoyingly up-beat, happy-go-lucky, non stick-in-the-mud was finally/maybe/sort of ready to get back on track. In the most lackadaisical way possible.

For a couple of months I ate better, but not in a super deliberate way.  I non-deliberately started walking and just tried to get in some extra physical activity everyday.  And, amazingly, it worked!  By July, I was down another 10 lbs.

In July my family and I (parents and sister-in-law) decided to book a cruise together for January 2012 to celebrate my 30th birthday.  And since then my weight loss journey has taken on a new shade of deliberateness and urgency.  The result of which is that I have lost another 25 lbs.

I still have a ways to go, but I really want to share this experience because it inspires me to read about others' journeys, their successes and failures.  I'm really hoping writing about this will also inspire me to keep going, and, I can only hope and dream, inspire someone else someday.

Down the road I'm planning on talking about my experience using the Couch to 5K program, following a low-carb/good fat diet, and some recipes I've found helpful.  But there will also probably be a lot of whining too because, in all honesty, I hate having to do this, but I'm committed to following it through.