Discover Yourself: Heather's Story

Have you ever in your life been unhappy with your weight or how your body looked when you saw yourself in the mirror? Have you ever had someone stand in front of you in a picture so that you didn't seem so fat? Have you ever tried to lose weight or become healthy and quit after a week or two because it "wasn't working"? I have been through all of those things. And let's put a beam of light in saying that one, you are not alone and two, there truly is a light at the end of the long dreadful tunnel. I say long and dreadful because of the pure and simple fact that being healthy and losing weight is a very long and hard process. You will fight with yourself, you will fight with your loved ones, and sometimes you will fight with a workout machine (yes I've done it). But it's worth it. Yes you've heard it before with the whole "oh stick with it you'll get there" speech that your skinny friend or family member gives you and you just want to scream because they make it seem so easy. It's not easy, there's no magical pill, or magical treadmill that will give you instant results. And quite frankly as much as you want to just talk to someone about how you feel it's hard finding someone who actually understands and will listen to you and try to help. Let me just tell you a little bit about my story so that you won't feel so much like I am a broken record or some infomercial about losing weight.

Hi!! My name is Heather and I am what they like to call an emotional eater. If I'm sad, I eat. If I'm mad, I eat. If I'm happy, well yeah I think you get the point. I have struggled with weight loss my whole life!! Having an obese mother and a father who taught us to eat everything on our plate or we'd go hungry it was a struggle to be healthy and I grew up having a relationship with food. Food equalled happiness and fulfillment in my life and that's something I needed because I didn't get it from anyone else. Okay moving on, so like I said I was a chunky girl all the time, well I changed that once I graduated high school. I wanted so bad to get out of the home I was in that I went to join the military. But I was way too overweight for them to even think about recruiting me. So I had to lose weight. A lot of weight. I lost 50lbs before they would consider me and after ending up not joining the military and moving away I lost another 15 or so pounds. And then I got married and ended up pregnant!! Yay!! I had a rough pregnancy, husband was gone a lot (he's in the military) and I had high blood pressure so always getting tested, and being stressed out I'm sure you know what I did... Yep that's right I ate, and ate and ate. And even though I threw up so much of what I ate I still kept eating. It was so comforting. Well after I have birth to my amazing little boy I had lost about 40lbs of my baby weight which meant only 20lbs more pounds to go to get to my comfortable weight yay!! And then reality set in. I was basically a single mother with my husband not really connecting with our son (he's sooo much better now a year & 1/2 later) and my marriage was on the rocks. I fell to a very dark place in my life to where I gained so much weight I was just miserable. I was obese, miserable, and still searched for comfort within eating.

Then there was a weight loss competition on base and I joined. And I was determined to beat a lot of people if not win. I dedicated a huge part of my life to working out and eating right. And when I say working out I mean I was always doing something to burn calories, and I calorie counted (so hard to do!!) I limited my caloric intake and I burned as many calories as I could and I drank A LOT of water!! I worked my butt off... Quite literally. I lost a total of 36lbs between Jan-April, and I won. I won the competition, but even better I was able to play with my son more without feeling like I was going to pass out, I started feeling better about myself, and the best thing is that I had no help, I did this all on my own with my own determination my own will power and my own sacrifices. Looking back I would say that had I gotten help from someone there's no telling how much better it would've been. Since then I have lost more weight to a total of about 50 or so pounds and I am wanting to lose more but am just not letting it control my life right now.

Okay so back to the reason I am writing this. My point in this very long blog is that losing weight and being healthy IS POSSIBLE!! I wanted to quit so many times, and sometimes I did. I would take a couple days off because I was just tired. But when I was done taking a break I went back at it full force because I WANTED TO BE HEALTHY!! And WANTING something is the biggest part of doing something like this. I've done it twice, because I WANTED it, not because someone else wanted it for me. Did I struggle? YES!! Do I still struggle? YES!! Do I still find comfort in food? YES!! But I've worked so hard to get to where I am that I am just not ready to give it all up for unhealthy food. That doesn't mean that I don't splurge and get a cheeseburger over a salad but I've come to a point to where I know how hard it is to work off what I eat, and I am an adult and have to make the decision as to if it is worth it or not and well sometimes to me it is. "One bad meal isn't going to make you fat just like one good meal isn't going to make you skinny" -that's something I've had to learn to live by.

Being healthy and losing weight isn't always fun, or the cool thing to do but it's so rewarding in the end. Feeling good about yourself is something that a lot of people in this lifetime just have never felt because they just don't know how. If you don't like something about yourself change it, you are the only person in this world that you should allow to change something about yourself. Allow yourself to live an amazing long life, feeling good about who you are and what you look like. And most importantly when you feel like giving up, know that you are not alone, someone out there is cheering you on and looking up to you as their inspiration!!

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