I’ve struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember. By the fourth grade, I weighed 150 pounds. And believe me, it wasn’t because I spent my childhood sitting around doing nothing!
My parents tried to get me involved in just about everything—dance, tumbling, baton twirling, jazz, ballet, drill team. You name it, I probably tried it! My brother was the slim, athletic one in the family. Me? Not so much. Haha!
But I was fortunate. My parents never made me feel ashamed of my weight. They knew I struggled, and they knew I was trying. They didn’t force me to clean my plate or make food a punishment. My mom even dieted right alongside me.
Of course, back then, dieting meant things like the cabbage soup diet and whatever other crazy fad was making the rounds. Looking back, I have to laugh at some of the things we tried!
What wasn’t so funny was how I felt about myself.
I wanted to be cute and slim like my friends. I wanted to wear the same clothes, feel pretty, and fit in. And sometimes people said things that made those feelings even worse.
I’ll never forget a friend’s grandmother telling me, “You could be really pretty if you weren’t fat.”
Ouch.
I’m sure she had no idea how much those words would stay with me, but here I am, decades later, still remembering them.
Somewhere along the way, I began believing that if I could just lose the weight, maybe everything else would fall into place. Maybe I’d feel prettier. Maybe I’d be more confident. Maybe people would like me more.
Looking back, I can see how much of my self-worth became tangled up in my weight and my need to be accepted. That’s something I’ve spent years trying to untangle.
And through it all, I kept searching for the answer.
When I was a freshman in college, my parents paid for Jenny Craig. I lost a little weight, but nothing that lasted. Later, after a difficult period in my personal life, I moved back home feeling completely lost. My weight continued to climb, and I continued looking for something that would finally work.
Around age 30, I tried lap-band surgery. My brother’s best friend had experienced wonderful results, and my family hoped it might help me, too.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the answer.
I’ve never been much of a volume eater. I could go all day without eating and be perfectly fine. My problem was more about the choices I made when I did eat.
I lost about 20 pounds with the lap band, regained it, and eventually became sick enough that my doctor had to reverse the procedure.
I tried other things, too. I even worked with a trainer for a while, and that helped. But no matter what I tried, I always seemed to end up back in the same place.
Eventually, I stopped dieting.
I was tired of trying so hard and feeling like I was getting nowhere. And while I stopped chasing diets, I hadn’t really changed the way I thought about food—or myself.
Then life changed in ways I never could have imagined.
I experienced a spinal cord injury that changed my mobility and how I navigate everyday life. Later, I suffered a stroke, or CVA.
And strangely enough, it was after my stroke that my relationship with food began to change.
Everything tasted terrible. And I mean EVERYTHING!
I started eating simple foods like oatmeal. I stopped drinking Cokes, and without really setting out to lose weight, the pounds started coming off.
Eventually, my sense of taste mostly returned, but by then something else had begun to shift.
For most of my life, I’d been focused on losing weight. This time, I found myself thinking more about being healthy.
I didn’t want another diet. I didn’t care whether it was keto, Weight Watchers, or whatever the latest trend happened to be. I wanted to eat better, cut back on highly processed foods, pay more attention to ingredients, and find something that worked for me.
Something simple. Something realistic. Something I could actually live with.
I also started listening to videos about mindset and trying to change the way I thought about food, habits, and myself.
There wasn’t some big, dramatic moment when everything clicked. I just started making changes, little by little, and going about my life.
And the weight kept coming off.
Before I knew it, I’d lost 50 pounds!
You’d think I would have been thrilled, right?
Well, I was. Sort of. Haha!
But after a lifetime of losing weight and gaining it back, I was mostly waiting for it to return. I’d been down that road so many times that I couldn’t quite believe this time would be any different.
Only it was.
I kept making the changes I’d started, and eventually, I’d lost over 100 pounds.
And this time, I kept it off.
That’s something I never managed to do with all those diets and programs I’d tried over the years.
I wish I could tell you that losing that weight completely changed how I see myself. That I suddenly became confident, stopped worrying about the scale, and learned to love every part of myself.
But that wouldn’t be the truth.
I still have about 80 pounds I’d like to lose, and right now, that scale seems perfectly happy staying exactly where it is.
It’s frustrating. Really frustrating.
Sometimes I find myself wishing I could go back to those early days when I wasn’t thinking so much about losing weight. I was just living differently, and one day I looked up and realized I’d lost 50 pounds.
Now it feels like I’m trying harder than ever, watching the numbers, wondering what I’m doing wrong, and getting nowhere.
I’ve even tried walking away from the scale for a while, hoping I could stop thinking about it so much. But when I come back and discover I’ve gained weight, that old frustration returns.
And sometimes, after all these years, I catch myself thinking that maybe I’m just meant to always be overweight.
I know that probably sounds terrible, especially coming from someone who’s already lost over 100 pounds. But it’s the truth.
Life has also gotten complicated, and I’ve fallen back into some old habits. Sometimes it’s just easier to reach for what’s familiar and comfortable. Yes, even those Cokes I worked so hard to give up!
I’m not proud of every choice I make, and there are days when I feel like I’ve lost some of the mindset that helped me get this far.
But I haven’t forgotten what I’ve learned.
I still believe that getting healthier should be about more than a number on the scale. I still want to make better food choices, take care of my body, and find habits that fit the life I’m living now.
And that life looks very different from the one I had before my spinal cord injury and stroke.
I can’t approach exercise or everyday activities the same way I once did. I’ve had to learn to work with my body instead of constantly wishing it could do what it used to do.
Some days I’m better at accepting that than others.
And maybe that’s the biggest lesson I’m still learning. There isn’t one perfect way to be healthy. What works for someone else might not work for me. What worked for me a few years ago might need to change today.
I’m still figuring it out.
Which brings me to Get Healthy with Us.
I think part of the reason this community means so much to me is because I know what it’s like to struggle, to get discouraged, and to feel like everyone else has figured something out that you haven’t.
I don’t want to be someone’s coach or tell anyone how they should live. I certainly don’t have all the answers!
What I want is a place where we can talk honestly about our experiences. Where we can celebrate the good days, admit when things aren’t going so well, share what we’ve learned, and encourage each other without feeling judged.
Because I don’t think getting healthier should mean spending the rest of our lives feeling like we’re failing whenever we aren’t perfect.
I started this journey as a little girl who desperately wanted to be thin and pretty like her friends.
All these years later, I’m still working on my weight. But somewhere along the way, I began wanting something more important.
I want to be healthy. I want to enjoy my life. And I want to stop measuring my worth by what the scale says.
I haven’t mastered any of that yet.
But I’ve come a long way.
And I’m still here, figuring it out one day at a time. đź’™
