About Mary

To fat and back

A few years ago, my brother and one of my most favoritest people in the world, came to visit me out in the boonies of Southern Illinois. I’m a native NYer, born and raised in NYC, but moved out to the sticks after a complicated, and irrelevant, period of bad luck and crap. My brother did me the biggest favor and sent me some pictures of his visit.  One of them was a picture of me, sitting on the sofa in all my huge-ness. That picture was lost in a computer crash, but is vivid enough in my mind to paint it if I could. There was something about that picture that knocked me over the head with a brick. It hurt. I cried. Even though I looked in the mirror every day, I never saw myself as I saw myself that moment, in that horrid picture of me.

This is one of my pictures just before I ‘peaked’ at 245. I decided after that picture that I needed to do something about my health, and Kaity and I started looking at what we ate, and learning what to eat. That was 2006.

In March, 2007, after a few months learning to eat right, and riding a stationary bike we had at home, we joined Gold’s. Kaity and I hit the gym every day together for the next year and a  half, and I made it down to 187 lbs. That was in 2008, the end of my trips to the gym.

Though I had been working for myself for several years since I moved to Southern Illinois, my line of work changed that year. Before, we worked in batches of time, with empty time in between that would allow us a schedule to hit the gym daily. Once my husband and I started working together, I had a desk job doing web design and development full time, and a client list and workload that didn’t allow for much flexibility. Add to that the multiple trips I made back and forth to Europe while growing and nurturing my new marriage, the gym and my fitness quest got put on the back burner.

I watched my weight inch up slowly, month after month, turning a blind eye to it, mostly. There were so many other things to worry about – who can’t relate to that? We’d walk through Walmart and I’d find myself getting choked up when I saw the really obese people riding around in carts, shopping for Doritos and Mountain Dew. I was petrified of becoming like them, and yet I wasn’t kicking myself in the ass to DO something to keep that from happening. Weight is not the kind of thing you can ignore and it will go away!

I hit 200, 210, and then 220 and finally…FINALLY…I realized if I did nothing about it, I’d end up right back where I started at 245 – or worse. So, in January of 2011, I decided that my work wasn’t changing any time soon, so since I couldn’t count on ‘getting back to the gym soon’, it was time to make other plans. I bought an elliptical machine with the commitment to make this work, even though I work at home and feel like I never have enough hours in the day for all that needs to be done.

This blog is my commitment to myself in writing. I’m accountable to you, my reader, whether that reader is just me, or someone out there that’s fighting the same battle I do, that’s hurting physically and emotionally because of the weight, that needs a friendly face in their corner. I hope something I write at some point gives someone, somewhere the ounce of hope they need to start getting on track, to get back on track, or just to be thankful they are on track.

I guess when it comes down to it, fitness, fat loss, weight loss or whatever it is you’re after, comes down to what we think we deserve. Where are your priorities? What do you hold most important in your life? Maybe it’s not yourself – it isn’t for me, but I do rank in the top 5. If I asked myself that question 10 or 20 years ago, I probably wouldn’t have made the list at all. If nothing else, I realize now that those things that are important to me other than myself aren’t going to get my (help/love/understanding/care/attention/etc) if I’m not here to give it, and I won’t be if I don’t take care of myself.

Here’s to a healthier tomorrow.

Jan, 2011 Rare full body shot… I had to see what I looked like	Feb, 2011 Working out, Feeling a little better about me But hiding my fat