Tag Archives: Weight Loss

A Tale of Two Races

Exercise, Motivation, Weight Loss, , ,


Originally it started with “I won’t…”.

Because I thought, “I won’t fail if I don’t try.”

“I won’t be dissapointed if I don’t expect anything.”

And since I did not aspire to prove myself correct, I told myself I could not. And that is how it became, “I can’t…”.

And I was stuck in “I can’t…”.

Until, Type 2 Diabetes came into my life, and gave me, my “I should…”.

And there I was, in conflict with myself.

The “I should..” brought yearning and expectations of action.

The “I should…” made me uneasy.

The “I should…” brought with it a nagging need to do the impossible.

So I cautiously began to entertain the idea.

And when I started out on this journey, it was with the sole intention of transforming my body.

But, I did not, however, expect to be led down a parallel path, that would teach me the importance of also transforming my mind.

And eventually, I was to be brought to a place, where I would discover, that in doing both simultaneously, I had completely transformed my life.

These two races were the markers of that evolution.

These two races were the beginning and the end of that internal transformation.

But here, at the beginning of this tale, it all began with the “I should…”. Continue reading A Tale of Two Races →

The Zoomies

Exercise, Humor, Motivation, Weight Loss, ,


I couldn’t sit still.

I was restless, and aflutter.

As a formerly docile creature, I had found myself amidst a revolution of epic proportions.

I had somehow lost my sense of foreboding, and somewhere along the line, a fearless lion-hearted woman had slipped into my skin.

I was feeling sassy, and brave, and completely out of my depth.

Something had awakened within. Something that had “danger” as its middle name…

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m no stranger to living on the edge.

I mean, I’ve jay walked…

I’ve torn tags off of mattresses that clearly read “DO NOT REMOVE”.

I’ve been a risk taker.

I’ve worn Crocs when NO ONE thought it was a good idea.

I’ve done some pretty crazy things in my day.

There were even times when I would return videotapes to Blockbuster without even rewinding them….on purpose.

Oh yeah. I was a rebel. A wildcard. A renegade.

Throwing caution to the wind back in the day resulted in me wearing white after Labor Day, on several occasions, and not caring who saw me.

I have tasted the thrill of being an outlaw running afoul of the fashion police.

Common sense, and sensible shoes be damned!

Sometimes, when the door would say ‘pull’ …I would push…and I would push hard.

I didn’t care. I was oblivious to the consequences. I can’t tell you how many times I blatantly ignored the easy way, and did things the hard way- for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

But now?

Now I had upped the ante, and literally flung myself off the deep end into some pretty wild adventures.

I had taken it to the next level.

It was officially official…I had a bad case of the zoomies. Continue reading The Zoomies →

Plump and Circumstance

Motivation, Weight Loss, ,

One size does not fit all.

Whomever decided that particular description was an accurate size determination, was clearly never a size that was more ample than the norm.

Over the years, I had grown wary of the one- size-fits-all label, because when you don’t even fit into a one-size-fits-all, you begin to question whether or not there is some alternate subspecies outside of “all” that you fall into.

Like one size fits everyone… but me.

I had worked really hard towards earning my Design degree during the three years that I spent going back to college after my divorce. I had thrown myself into my college education with 100% of my effort. And now I was graduating with honors and distinction, and finally getting my much sought after, formerly elusive, college degree.

Initially, I had gone to college right out of high school up in northern Arizona with the idea of becoming a nurse. But after being out on my own and deciding that nursing school was not for me, I had spent the rest of that first year aimless and floundering, with no direction or course of study. I had partied a little bit too much, and pushed the limits of my self-discipline (or lack there of) to the point to where, after only a year, I had given up, dropped out, and moved back home to “find myself”.

But all I found, it seems, was a part-time job at Jack-in-the-Box, and a whole lot of yearning for something more.

I eventually ran away to the beach in California to follow my bliss, and left my college aspirations in the dust.

Life happened, and after a while, I just forgot about my foray into higher education, and accepted my current circumstances as “a choice that I had made”.

After that, I got married, had two children, and worked as a nanny, a barista, and as a video store employee for minimum wage.

I made due.

It wasn’t until I got divorced, and became a single parent, that I realized that I really needed a college degree in order to give myself the best chance possible to provide for my two little boys. My job at Starbucks was not enough to build the life for us that I had wanted.

So I packed up my pride, transferred my job, and moved back to my childhood home in Arizona. Into my old bedroom, where my Scott Baio posters still hung on the closet door, in the hopes that my parents would help me to get back on my feet, and also, so that I could return to school to finish what I started so many years before.

During those three years back in Arizona after my divorce, my weight went up to my highest on record of 293 pounds.

Those were three very stressful and difficult years while simultaneously juggling single parenthood, work, and school… but I did it.

I worked really hard, and surpassed all of the expectations that I had for myself academically. 

But still, here I was, on the verge of graduation, staring at a box that held my cap and gown, and my Phi Theta Kappa sashes, and feeling nothing but dread when I noticed the tag on the commencement gown…

One-size-fits-all…

My heart sank.

I hadn’t tried it on yet, but it made me nervous, and here we were, on the very day of graduation.

I started to feel uneasy.

I pulled out and looked at it. It looked big enough, so I began to put it on…

But alas, it did not fit. Continue reading Plump and Circumstance →

A Chance to Dance

Motivation, Weight Loss, , ,


I have always been a dancer deep down in my soul.

Dance lessons as a young girl were always my happy place, and soon became an integral part of my identity.

It was an outward expression of my creative spirit, and a way to connect with myself as I grew into a young lady.

I danced with reckless abandon.

With the entirety of my being.

Like my pants were on fire….

I was a dancer.

And I just wanted to dance.

Even while I was in high school, I joined the dance team. But due to a specific set of standards, even back then, I was considered the “fat girl”. I was “muscular”, and “big-boned”. It was just an unfortunate circumstance, that compared to the other girls, I was the heaviest. And once I had begun to see myself that way, I was never really able to “unsee” it.

Eventually, that altered version of myself became an integral part of my newly evolving identity…and that was when things began to change. Continue reading A Chance to Dance →

Of “Corset” Matters

Humor

We all have a list.

A list of things that we look forward to fulfilling and coming about, once we’ve hit our weight loss goals.

Most of these things are extremely poignant and emotional, like ridding ourselves of our medical issues and chronic pain.

We all have different reasons for beginning a path to wellness. 

Reasons that we know will benefit the quality of our lives in the long run. 

Reasons that are extremely profound, and will greatly affect the big picture of our every day existence.

And without putting too fine a point on it, these reasons are indeed the origin of Day 1 for most of us, and tend to provide us with our much needed initial motivations.

We all want to be healthy-

We all want to live our best lives-

And there is no doubt in my mind, that overall health is by far the most important benefit of weight loss.

But…. there is another list.

A secret list.

A secondary list, that maybe we tend to keep to ourselves, because, let’s face it, some of the things on this particular list can seem Continue reading Of “Corset” Matters →

The Captain’s Wench

Motivation,

My fiancé is a boat Captain.

He currently works out of the gulf of Mexico, but over the years, he has worked in many ports including Alaska, Trinidad, and many different countries in Africa.

During the time at which my weight loss journey began, he had been working out of East Africa for about a year. While working overseas, he was on a schedule that had him abroad for 3 to 4 months at a time, and then home for one month.

I joined Weight Watchers during a time when he had just left Continue reading The Captain’s Wench →

The Warrior

Weight Loss, ,

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There’s a reason why they call it a weight-loss battle.

Because deciding to commit to a weight-loss journey is a lot like declaring war-

You need to have the mindset from the get go, that you are going to be the victor.

When you go into a war situation (and history will back me up on this), you need to do everything in your power to put the Continue reading The Warrior →