That is just the blunt reality in life, always there will be obstacles. The truth of the matter is once you are obese it is even harder to get healthy. I often would sit and cry and whine about how hard it would be to lose weight and how mad I was at myself for not starting sooner before I got totally out of control. For it would have been a lot easier to maintain a healthier body than to try and carve one out of all the mess I had made of it. And for years, 8-10 to be exact I let those excuses get in my way.
I had accepted my fate to be fat as I put it. It was in my DNA, many of my family members were also larger and clearly it was just the way we were built. I was the queen of justification on it. Then the sicker I got the more medications I needed I justified it even more. Exercise would be too painful, I would not be able to do it. I was unable to be normal.
Truth of the matter is, one day I was at work picking up my medications and I looked at the bag, 7 bottles of pills. I looked at another customer picking up a few prescriptions and thought to myself wow I am like an old lady already with all these damn pills, this is so bad. I thought about how many I might be on by the time I was 40 and just got even more depressed.
I wanted to make changes but I had no idea where to start. Then once I had decided to make changes, there were the doubters. Those people who laughed at me when I said I wanted to be skinny. In fact then once even after I began Weight Watchers I had doubters. When I first began exercise it was hard. Let me rephrase that, IT SUCKED. This may be TMI but this is true, I hated the way all of my fat in front of me would jiggle and move even if I broke out into a brisk walk. It made me sick but I kept working at it because yes it sucked but something inside me had woken up.
Inside of me this fighter was sleeping. Maybe it was the doubters I had listened to, maybe it was the negativity inside of me. But it lived dormant for a long long time. This fighter she woke up that day I began working out, she said hey I know this sucks but after we finish I wake up and feel good. It was those endorphins, they fed my inner fighter. Slowly, yes very slowly, I began to look forward to workouts.
Then one day I was watching the Biggest Loser and they ran a marathon. I was running for 5Ks at that point and still about 200 pounds. I looked to the person next to me watching tv and said then I want to do that. They laughed at me, as did a few other people. You cannot run a marathon that is too many miles to run at once. I had heard many things like that when I told people I had begun running. I heard positive things too from my positive supporters so I began to just focus on their words of encouragement.
Even at the half marathon distance people told me I was a little nuts. And I had begun listening to it sometimes I would get discouraged and slow down or rethink my goals. But there was one thing that always stayed true to me, my fighter living inside. She never gave up on that marathon dream. I would go out on long training runs and get cautioned, it got to be a funny joke, yes I am going to run 22 miles, yes I will be ok. I got told ok well call me when you cannot make it and I will pick you up. I think the truth is, all that negativity it made me even stronger.
All the shit in the way, I embraced it. The disease I was managing with medications, I learned how to do it more naturally and with weight loss and the right nutrition. All those doubters, I looked forward to proving them wrong. In fact I would smile at their comments and smile even bigger as I finished those long runs. The day I crossed that finish line of my first marathon, I smiled and yelled and could not contain my excitement. The fighter won that day.
She wins every single day now. Every day I over come an obstacle and maintain my fitness, whether through injury or weight loss maintenance. She is there fighting. Never give up. That is her motto. And no matter what shit gets in the way, I know that if I wake up the fighter inside of me she will hold me up and get me through it.
Have you embraced your inner fighter yet?
