Through the fire

We try to tell ourselves that losing weight is only about the lifestyle change of dieting or changing one's diet and through exercise or getting active. But there is so much more. I have done this for over a year now. Obviously, I have gone through tribulations in the last year. I have been homeless and had other normal ups and downs of life during that time. So, I have proven to myself I have the drive and the motivation. But I have fallen back into old habits starting at Christmas with the emotional turmoil that I talked about in earlier blog posts. I have tried through starting a new program and Pokes for Fitness to overcome this but to no avail. I go back and forth a good day, a bad day, a good week, and a bad few days. What was different? I was liking myself last year. My weight loss and the people I met talking to me inspired me to keep going. But when you have this much to lose, other things, deeper things will come up I guess.

This has to be a total life overhaul not just about my food intake or my workout. Do I love myself? Yes. I did learn to do that last year. But do I really like myself? Not all the time. Like everyone else in your life. You don't always like yourself. And my definition of love is that love is a choice to do the very best for that person no matter the cost to you. I am not good at always making the right choices. How is it that you can love your husband, your kids, your best friends and even total strangers sometimes with so much unconditional love and then not show that to yourself? It's odd how I know that I am not the only one to do this.

I know this takes skills that somehow I never had or have lost along the way. I was raised by one good mother; she wasn't perfect. No one is. She did the best she could with what she had. I held her up like she was the world to me. She was and is my standard for being a good mom and person. I know I will probably never live up to this. At 36, I think I have finally come to terms with this. She had two good parents raise her. I know they weren't perfect either. She has had her own stuff to go through with her parentage. Sure I had a crap childhood until I was 12. I hated myself because of everything. I was to fat. My father had told me this. And I believed him. Still to this day I feel like I will never be normal. It's not the weight. I know after last year I could go and lose the weight. I also know due to the last two months, I could easily gain it right back. It scares me. I feel after a year I should be in better condition. I thought I should be able to do the 3 mile walk and the hour aerobics session that I did last week. But as the doctor pointed it, I am not normal. I am still almost 300lbs.

So, I made it to being a survivor from being a victim. I feel that in my heart. I am a survivor. I know that to the depths of my soul and back. But the question remains: how do you get from being a survivor to living life again? I know that living life includes things like taking care of yourself and making plans for the future and being adventurous and not hiding in the food or video games or relieving stress through an addiction. But how do you get there? I personally don't know the exact answer to that now but just living day to day isn't the answer. So, I woke up this morning with this song in my head: It has not left yet. It is like my soul is crying out to finish this journey. Saying to my heart I love you even if we have to go through the fire and get this all out and start over. Even if I have to start training myself to do simple tasks again. That we all learn as a child but somehow I have stopped doing thinking why bother if no one cares. I shouldn't base my happiness on the scale or if my husband notices my hairstyle or if I smell nice or if someone notices my weight loss. I need to do everything I do because I want to, because I care about myself enough to get enough sleep to properly care for myself or brush my teeth everyday or shower. Yeah I said it. Somethings have fallen by the wayside. I am being totally honest here. How many people let themselves slide if they have no place to go everyday? I know I am not the only one. So, don't say I am. But my point is I still have hope that I will not only lose the weight but start caring again. So, today I started reading a book about solving this. I have read it before or at least parts of it. It's called The Solution by Laurel Mellin, MA, RD. I have gone through two programs that dealt with these issues of the heart and weight loss before but I don't think these things always stuck because I wasn't in the best place to really finish this journey. I'll tell you more about this book later. My post seems to be getting rather long. But for now it's time to start delving into that fire and getting back to learning how to live again not just surviving.