Health Thoughts for the Week...

Some thoughts on health and body image...

Happiness is a feeling.  Fat is not.

Fat will not determine my level of happiness.  Certainly, when I am taking care of myself I feel better.  I have more energy.  When I eat a well-balanced meal as opposed to an unhealthy one, I feel less inclined to make unhealthy choices later on.

Neither is fat a moral failing.

Wanting to lose weight and wanting to be healthier is not a moral failing.  Obsessing over it is unhealthy.  Using "thinspiration" and body comparison is unhealthy.  My body is not like anyone else's and therefore I will not use that method.  My body tells me when I am hungry, and I listen to it.  Sometimes my body tells me when I want (rather than need) something, and that is ok too.

Food is part of life's enjoyment.  It should be eaten and enjoyed.  If I eat a donut and enjoy it, (and I did, just this morning) I have no reason to feel guilty.

Finding a balance is a process.  I feel better today than I did a month ago, and that is what makes me happy.  It is not a feeling of fat or skinny or in-between.  And this isn't to say that those conflicts don't or won't arise within me.  But I am learning to really evaluate everything I am thinking about myself and my body image... does that make sense?

Sorry for the scattered thoughts.  And sorry for so much of the same stuff in the past couple of weeks here.  Haven't had much to say lately on this blog.

I wonder what makes people think that they have the right to tell you what they think of your body.  Or thought of your body before you began a transformation.  For one, the fact that I am making efforts to be healthy and exercise and take care of myself does not automatically mean I have spent the past three years hating my body.  In fact, it was only recently that I fell into that mindset.

My point is, I was fine with my body at the time, why weren't you?  What makes you think that you can insult me for the way I looked for so long, just because I look a little different now?

I feel like I should make the disclaimer that this was not a family member or close friend who made this comment.  None of them ever would.  It just reinforces how I feel about the idea of each individual's body image.  It's different for everyone.  And it is simply never ok to talk to someone about their weight, their size, their eating or their exercise habits unless they ask you.  What is wrong with our society that we think we have the right to do that?  I have no problem with someone commenting about my weight loss, but when you take it a step further to insult the way I looked for so long (and so very recently), it hurts.

Anyway... thankfully I do feel much better than I did and it hasn't discouraged me at all.  Just reinforced the fact that people can be real assholes.  Well, that is all for now.

thoughts on being healthy from a slightly chubby almost-26-year-old

Well, it happened again... but this time it was a little more real.

I had to look at myself in the mirror, square in the face, and come to terms with reality.  I'm unhealthy.  I don't exercise.  I don't eat right.  And I feel like crap... all the time.  I carry extra weight that I've especially packed on in the past year, and I don't feel good about myself.  And I've thrown out my back a total of four times in my life, the most recent of which put me in the ER after passing out from extreme pain.  This should not be happening to a 25 year old!

For the past week I've been on what I guess you would call a diet, though I'm trying very hard not to think of it as such.  I prefer to think of it as a purging of the daily bad habits that I've developed, and learning new habits.  For instance, processed carbs.  I haven't had them in over a week.  And let me tell you, I'm a text-book carb addict.  And the thing is, I'm fine!  I haven't keeled over and died from not having french fries or chips or cheez-its!  (Not to mention I have yet to feel bloated once since I've cut those out of my diet-- that was a daily feeling for me)  For now, I'm trying to cut out red meat.  And I've added in an abundance of fruit and vegetables to my diet, along with walking several days a week.

Ok, ok.  I've just started and so I haven't fallen off the wagon, and I'm still kind of excited about trying to change my ways.  The way I'm looking at it is, there's no wagon to fall off of.  If I have a bad day and overeat pizza or ice cream, instead of looking at it as a failure I will try to pick myself up again and get right back at it.  Because eating something you really want isn't a moral failing, it's just maybe not the healthiest thing.

So while I was on my walk today, I had some thoughts.

1. Food has this hold over me, that I wish it didn't.  I don't think about it all the time, but I do think about my next meal more often than I should.

2. Though I'm trying to be healthy, I don't want to reach a point where I'm constantly counting calories, carbs, and fat, and never allowing myself to eat that really delicious Zaxby's milkshake or pizza.  It's just learning that I can't do those things every day.

3. When did I get so old?  Walking shouldn't be this hard.

4. I'm still young, but let's face it.  I don't have the same body or metabolism I did when I was sixteen.  Thirty is only four years away away and I've spent most of my twenties in a sedentary coma watching TV and eating ice cream.  Ok, that's an extreme exaggeration.  But I want my thirties to be better than my twenties... and if I continue in the habits I'm in, that's not going to happen.

5. I am trying to make my focus healthy, but I do want to lose weight and get back to the size that makes me feel better about myself-- and also helps me to be able to do the things I want to do with more energy.

6. I love food, and that's ok.  I am trying to learn to love it differently.

It's been almost four years that I've been out of college.  Yet I still have this recurring dream.  In it I'm taking an online class, and I procrastinate on the work, thinking I still have plenty of time for the assignments to be finished.  Suddenly the class is almost over and I haven't completed any of the assignments, even though they were due each week.  And I know I'm going to fail.  These are awful and very vivid dreams that I wake up from feeling very stressed.  Why do I have these dreams?  I haven't taken an online class since my sophomore year of college.

Well, I am back from what was a wonderful 10+ days with family!  I say 10+ because my original trip was 10 days.  However, I got home 28 hours later than expected.  We went to the wedding of Allison's best friend in St. Louis, a childhood friend we have known for about 22 years.  That was initially what brought us up there, so we made a family trip out of it.

I really do love being with my extended family whenever I can.  We had a cook-out at my aunt and uncle's on my dad's side, and got to see just about everyone there.  Then we spent several days on the farm with my grandparents on my mom's side.  That was a very relaxing time.  We actually didn't get to see everyone on that side, but we still had a lot of fun.  Daily trips to the Dairy Barn made it fun.  The weather was remarkably cold for May (40s during the night, 60s during the day).  I had a very relaxed time.

We spent the last couple nights at my aunt and uncle's house.  My parents left to drive back home last Monday, and my aunt took me to the airport in the afternoon.  Thus began a looong, drawn-out day of delayed flights and bad weather.  You know how things have been in the Midwest.  Finally my flight in St. Louis was so delayed, I would miss my connecting flight in Chicago.  So my aunt and uncle picked me up and I spent another night with them, to fly out the next afternoon.  Things went smoothly and I made it to Chicago and onto my plane there, but then got delayed again.  Ended up spending almost five hours on the plane before it took off.  But I made it home (in the middle of the night, no less), and lucky I did because the weather up there has continued to be pretty bad from all the news coverage I've seen.

I'm glad to be home.  I've been pretty busy due to work and my sister being in town the past week... but that's a good busy.  I'm hoping to pick up some overtime over the next few weeks to make up for missed work.  I can't believe June is already here.