Finding My Healthy

What a difference a year can make...

I really hesitated on sharing this post, but my girl K convinced me to share. I try to be so real with my readers. So here I am, being real with you all.

September 2018

A year ago in December, after my shoulder surgery, I got on the scale at my doctor's office and was floored with my weight. It was the heaviest I had ever been. Even now, when I look at those pictures, I try not to define myself as fat or chubby. I wasn't. I don't want to cut myself down by telling myself otherwise. But I did decide I wasn't happy with the number I saw, and I knew I could do better. So my other girl K and I began a weight loss plan, and I was incredibly successful with it. It was exciting. And as a girl who struggled with an eating disorder (albeit years and years ago), it was empowering to know I could lose the weight in a healthy way. I really did have to keep myself in check, however, and not let myself get overzealous in my pursuit. My goal was to be healthy and to feel good about myself. Not get as skinny as possible. My goal was to find a weight that was ideal for my body and not kill myself to look like 115 pounds again (no knock on that weight... it just wasn't my ideal number). I wanted to find a place that was realistic for me to maintain and to feel good about myself. So in the course of four months, I managed to lose 30 pounds. And I felt good. And that was where my body just naturally plateaued and I wasn't going to kill myself for anything different. Was I a skinny-mini? Nope. But did I feel good about where I was? Yep. Was I healthy? Yep. Was I making good choices for my body? Yep. And that is what mattered.

Exactly 365 days apart

Fast forward four more months, and then I got sick. I was dropping weight rapidly and didn't know why. At first, I attributed it to one of my meds, aptly called the speed diet pill, but then all this other stuff came to a head and I ultimately got my gastroparesis diagnosis. Since then I've managed to put some weight back on, but in a good way because it meant I was absorbing my nutrients again. I'm still smaller than I what I had been when I was trying, but again, this is where my body naturally wants to be considering my circumstances. Even though food options like a salad for lunch is completely off the table, I still try to make as many healthy choices as I can for my diet. I really have to focus on my food, more than I ever had before, because I need to make both healthy choices to maintain my good weight, as well as get as many diverse nutrients as possible since I'm so limited on those foods. It's a tricky line to balance when my body responds best to rice and white bread, but I know I need more than that.

August 2018

I really want to stress that my goal was a healthy, natural weight. I don't want to sensationalize weight loss. In our culture, skinny = healthy, the thinner the better, but that's not a healthy perspective. Healthy looks like many different things and I only encourage you to find what that looks like for you and not compare yourself to the woman down the street, or the one whose desk is across from yours at work, or the woman on the elliptical beside you at the gym. Find your healthy.

*Word count update! 72,830