Monday, July 25, 2011

Friend Makin' Mondays: Defining Moments

Friend Makin' Mondays is a regular feature from All the Weigh, a blog which I heartily recommend!

Was there a defining moment in which you realized that you needed to lose weight? If so, will you elaborate? (If you experienced this moment in some other area of your life, please feel free to share that too!)

My moment was less like Kenlie's moment. I didn't have an event that worked as a catalyst; rather, my moment was more a realization of how I felt about myself.

I had been overweight for the later part of elementary school and all of junior high. In high school, I maintained a healthy weight, but I didn't realize it was healthy because I was overweight by BMI standards. My color guard instructor constantly found reasons to criticize my body, and he made us run two miles every day while wearing wrist and ankle weights. (One day, I'll discuss this at length.) In college I gained quite a bit of weight for a variety of reasons. I joined Weight Watchers in my second-to-last year of undergrad for shallow reasons. I had yet to realize that my self-worth was tied so tightly to my weight.

WW didn't help me at all; in fact, it hurt. I had to stop going to WW because of the financial and emotional strain, and I gained another twenty pounds. For about a year, I set aside my weight and tried to focus on myself. After graduation, I moved to Lexington to start my master's degree. I decided that things had to change. The light bulb finally clicked that I should lose weight because I love myself, not because I hate myself. My family has a history of medical problems that can be weight-related: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. If I wanted to take care of myself and avoid these problems, I needed to lose weight and eat better.

It pains me to watch shows where the overweight people decide to lose weight because they say they hate themselves. They hate seeing their reflection in the mirror. They hate the rolls or the way their clothes fit. Personally, that seems to be the wrong reason to start this journey. We all have our reasons, but the underlying cause should be because you want to do better for yourself.

7 comments:

  1. amazing story...my change came when I realized that I was indeed fat and stopped making excuses for myself. I realized I was more than plus sized clothes all of the other trappings that come along with being over weight! I blogged about this today actually.

    "STOPPING BY FROM FMM"

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  2. Great post! I think you are so right about having to love yourself (although it's so much easier said than done!). I had something along those lines as a sort of subtitle on my blog for a while: "You don't lose weight to become worthy, you lose weight because you ARE worthy."

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  3. I love the idea that you should lose weight, not because you hate yourself, but because you love yourself enough to let yourself be healthy :)

    Cheers!

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  4. http://yapsaboutweightloss.blogspot.com/2011/07/fmm-friend-making-monday.html

    I am losing the weight since I want to keep the needle away as long as possible. (insulin)

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  5. I totally agree that it should be because you love yourself......however, it's hard to do that when you've let yourself get to a stage where you feel so unhappy. I've definitely noticed a change in attitude since just last month, where I'm starting to get excited about the future and thinking about all the things that I want for myself and that I'm capable of!

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  6. couldn't have said it better myself, i just found FMM so I'll definitely have to remember to join in next week :0) Glad to have found your blog!!

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  7. Great post! I had a similar experience, in that for years, I thought skinny=happy... I had to realize that in fact, for ME, only when I was finally happy could I focus and lose the weight, so happy=skinny!

    I had everything backwards for so many years - but now I'm happy with who I am, and I take care of myself because it keeps me happy!

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