A Purpose

I recently read a blog a friend of mine keeps about her new life as a Brewer's Wife. She is doing an exercise called Zero to Hero for blogging. I've decided to participate. I first started this blog at the encouragement of a friend when I began working out. The friend who is my new blogging buddy actually helped name my blog. I've had so much fun with the blog and sharing my journey of becoming healthy. It's been almost four years ago. I blogged less and less while I was in the heart of my dissertation work. There were not enough hours in the day. Quite truthfully, when there were extra hours I wanted to do anything other than type on the computer. I enjoy blogging and one of my goals for 2014 was to get back into a steady blogging routine. You will like reading this blog if you like humor…for example…I blogged about the time my pants fell off of me while working out in the gym because they were too big and I was too cheap to go buy new ones. Humor is big for me. You will also want to read this blog if you struggle with weight loss. I like to share tips that work for me. I also plan to include more information in here about how we can break food addictions. How we can use exercise effectively to achieve the results we want. I am learning more and more about clean eating. Especially, eating grain free. I plan to share much more of that on here. So if you are interested in clean eating and the research on grains, you will want to read this blog. I am no longer working out with a trainer. I'm learning a lot on my own. Although, I do occasionally call Trainer Mike with questions. I will be sharing workout information on here as well. I will also share the emotional ups and downs of life that get in the way of diet and exercise. ALTHOUGH, my focus will be on how to keep the emotions out of our diet and exercise. You might think this is impossible, but I argue that it is not. My goal of this blog as well as my FB page by the same name is to inspire others. I have lost 70 pounds. I had tried every diet gimmick ever. I had been the poster child for yo you dieting. I now know it is a life style. You hear that all the time on tv and in what you read. I had read it and heard it thousands of time. Until I went into the trenches, it did not sink in. If you are in the mindset I was in, you are probably thinking…"I don't need a lifestyle change. I just need to diet off a few pounds and then I will keep it off." Probably not going to see a lot of success that way. I had been overweight since I was a child. It just kept getting worse and worse. Until one day a few years ago I was at the doctor for some follow up tests after a mysterious illness had me in the hospital for three days after countless trips to the ER before that. The doctor said you are borderline diabetic. I asked him for a pill. I told him I had tried everything and there wasn't a diet that worked for me. He told me there was no pill. I went back a few months later feeling miserable. Insisting there was something seriously wrong with me that the tests in the hospital hadn't found. No energy, highly irritable, depressed. He pulled up my blood test results. He said, "You feel poorly because you are extremely overweight. You are borderline diabetic. This is why you feel so poorly." He asked me about my diet and exercise. He really wanted to know what kinds of changes I had made. I hadn't made any. I told him I needed a pill to help. I was begging. I couldn't do it on my own. The doctor walked out of my room, turned back and looked at me and said, "I can't fix stupid." I was FURIOUS! LIVID! How dare he! It was his job to fix me! It's not my fault I was dealt these genes and come from a family of obesity. I stewed on this for a while. I didn't tell anyone what the doctor said. I'll tell you more about this in my next blog. What you do need to know is that I have continued to go back to that doctor. I LOVE him. He is my biggest fan. He continually tells me I am an inspiration to him. He now asks me to help get some of his other patients motivated and how they can believe that they too can do this. So I want readers of this blog to be inspired. I want readers to learn from what I post. AND I want to learn from you. I want you to interact and share information with me. I will feel this blog is successful when 1) it's readership grows and 2) readers are taking the steps to get healthy. It is baby steps for sure. But those baby steps lead to amazing leaps which feel INCREDIBLE!