I work out. A lot. I go through spurts of doing nothing and then get crazy and try to do too much to make up for my lack of nothing. Lately however, I have been on a streak where I have done something every day. I haven’t stopped doing something since the day after Turkey Day 2011. You would think that after doing all of that working out, I’d be as thin as a toothpick.

You’d be wrong. In fact, I am by all intents, purposes and definitions obese. Well, maybe not obese but definitely overweight. Why? Because at times I have eaten like complete crap and while you can exercise to your heart’s content and even so much that you pass out (I’ve kind of had that happen) unless you clean up your diet, you will be overweight. It doesn’t help when you end up using food for comfort when all other things in life are going as badly as possible. And it also doesn’t help when for so many cultures, food is a way to show affection for people. If you go somewhere and don’t eat, then it is viewed as an insult. Sometimes not eating is just because you aren’t hungry and can’t stomach another bite, but you will eat anyway so as not to offend others. 

Over the years, I have tried many things to change where I am on the scale of health. I’ve probably done every diet you can think of, though I have managed to stay away from the stupid ones (cabbage soup diet anyone? Hello stupid!) However, something finally clicked for me in December of 2012. I finally got it all figured out to where I could finally start losing weight and get healthy for my sake rather than to fit some sort of ideal of how I should look.

Was it easy getting to this point? No. Have I gotten to where I want to be? Not yet, but I’m still working to get there and hopefully that will happen soon.

So how did it all come about? I guess it all started to come together because I had a goal in mind of what I wanted to accomplish and slowly started to form a plan of making that happen. It also helped that I hired a personal trainer in December of 2012 to help me get to this goal I have. I have had a personal trainer before, but I don’t think I was really ready to do what was necessary or at least how to go about it at the time. This time, however, I had already gotten help with my food problem and since I was already good about working out, it was just a matter of putting it all together to make it happen.

Fortunately, it has slowly come together for me. I think it is coming together also because I have some truly amazing friends who are supportive of my ultimate goal. I know I can talk to them about what I want to do and accomplish and they don’t get a glazed look in their eyes listening to me discuss it. I’m sure that would happen with some people I know. The encouragement I get from these people is just so invaluable. It makes me keep working toward my goals of the number I want to see on the scale as well as my larger goal that really spurred me to get serious about being healthy.

A lot of times when people set out to lose weight, it is because they want to fit into a certain size of clothing or look good for a big life event like a wedding or reunion. I wish my reason was that, but really when I think about it, I just want to get where I am headed because I want to be healthy and feel good about myself. Additionally when I changed my focus from the umber on the scale to just feeling good and being healthy, things seemed to click better in terms of getting there.

Yes, I have a number on the scale that I would love to achieve. However, if I never get to that number, I’m pretty sure I will be ok with it because I know I am getting healthier. Already I am “suffering” the problem of having hardly anything in my closet that fits. Everything is too big and I still find it amazing that when I go shopping for workout clothes, I have to buy a smaller size than what I have done in the past. It is still a weird feeling to walk in the store and not got for what was my “usual” size, but it is fun to know I can get the smaller things.

I still have a long way to go in my fatty tale, but I have no doubt now that I will ultimately be talking of my tale in the past tense rather than it still being my current state of affairs.