News Flash

I am overweight. I have struggled with my weight almost my entire life. I remember feeling fat in kindergarten, your average say 6 year old doesn't not (should not) come up with this idea on their own and I don't remember classmates telling me that I was fat so I pretty much know the source... Anyway I look back and I was a normal 6 year old, just tall. Whatever, I am far older than 6 and the self esteem body issue damage has been done and all I can do is work through how I feel.

Time goes by. I get to be a freshman in high school, I am doing okay, I am still overweight but in the grand scheme of things I was relatively normal for an adult. Then my parents go through their divorce. I get really angry and depressed and food became a comfort. I gained a lot of weight in high school and I wish I could go back to those days and reorganize my behavior and unhealthy eating habits. But regrets die hard and we move on, right?

I get to college. Now I am significantly overweight. I go through my freshman year and finish and realize I hate being overweight. I start doing weight watchers and lose a lot of weight, yet I become obsessive about it and it didn't end up being the healthiest thing for me at that time in my life. I was convinced my life would be so much better if I was thin. I was wrong. It did make me susceptible to the male audience that I had never received attention from and little did I know at the time most guys that I met in Provo did not want to get to know me for my mind.

So heart break, heart break, abusive relationships, heart break, etc occur.

Then I get sick... I get so awesomely sick that I can't get out of bed or go to school for that semester. I get so sick that I can't run which was my life line to staying thin at that time. I pick myself up have some more abuse and heart break and then I meet Dan. Dan accepted me for the "man hating basket case" that I was at the time. He saw me and wanted to know me. I am so thankful for him. He sees me through my Pseudotumor Cerebri and then is my husband when I find out about my insulin resistance.

Now I am at the state where I have had 3 significant health issues in the past year and a half and have gained back most of the weight I lost originally. I need to lose weight in order to be a healthy person but now I realize I don't need to lose weight to be accepted. I think about my future and my children and I now want to change for completely different reasons.
I am a public health major. I have a great worth of knowledge about what it takes for people to live long lives and be healthy. I know I am one of the only overweight people in my classes but still I come everyday and talk about lowering peoples risk for diabetes and childhood obesity levels. I think to myself... "will I ever be a marketable candidate for a position if I cannot portray myself as living what I preach?"

Well by the demands of my doctor and her threats on my future I am back on healthy regime. I don't mind it, I actually quite prefer it, however sometimes I fear my obsessive competitive attitude will manifest in an unhealthy way. Dan has me in check however.

I miss running. I used to run, a lot. I used to run all over Provo and I miss that dearly. I am not working into getting into the perfect pair of jeans, I am not looking to set off on the runways of New York or Paris or even Provo.... I am looking to run again, because when I ran I felt so free.
This may be of interest to absolutely no one, but these are the things I don't tell people. These are the things I hide away from peers and friends. Well guess what, I'm not hiding anymore.