Because I'm Totally Worth It

One day in the middle of 2021 I stepped on the scale for the first time in like five years and the number on there was so utterly horrifying it was surreal. It felt like I was living in a nightmare with no hope of ever waking up from it. There was no way around those numbers. There was no reasonable way to minimize, rationalize, or lie to myself about them unless I was also willing to believe that the sun hadn’t come up that morning.

I have always struggled with my weight. In junior high when most girls weighed about 100-110 at the most, I was weighing in about 135-140. Fast forward to adulthood: I reached my top weight in 2006 and managed to lose 20 pounds that year. I regained them. In 2008 I lost like 30 pounds and regained them the next year. I remained pretty steady there for several years. Then life punched me in the gut repeatedly for a few years and over the period of several years I gained, on top of my previous top weight from back in the day, close to 60 pounds.

Part of that weight gain came from becoming fundamentally sedentary, primarily in the form of desk jobs. Demeaning, low paying ones at that. A lot of unwanted change, such as out of state move to a place with long snowy winters. And truthfully, this move was so disheartening and challenging that I just gave up on life in a way and just focused on getting by day by day. I made it back to California fortunately, but to a job that caused me so much stress it even changed the texture of my hair. Then the pandemic exacerbated sedentarism. Brutal honesty: my eating habits during a period of about three years were shameful and horrifying.

So for the good part of about eight years, depending on when I start/stop counting, I'd been in survival mode for the most part. Only someone who has experienced survival mode for any prolonged length of time can fully understand how significantly it affects your state of mind and physical health. It's a domino effect of so many overlapping internal and external factors that play off each other that it turns you into a whole different person almost. That's the best way I know how to describe it.

Up until then I'd been relatively physically active, which is what kept me steady at my top weight for a while. I had something of a baseline physically and nutritionally. But there was a fundamental break in that baseline when I moved out of state, and never recouped it until recently.

In 2021 a lot of things came to a head for me, including dealing with my mother's worsening vascular dementia, and all the unwanted change and new normals it brought. The emotional, mental, and spiritual impact of dealing with that was the catalyst that finally led to an eventual full crash and burn which in turn led to my course correction epiphany earlier this year, and learning to let go of the things I can't control, painful as it was.

Since September 2021, before my course correction epiphany, however, I had already lost about 50 pounds, due mostly to an all natural supplement that actually worked. Fifty pounds was a great start. And it helped me reclaim a measure of sanity, clarity, hope and and self-worth which I'm thankful for, but it was just that: it's a great start.

Losing that weight paved the way for being in a place mentally and spiritually for the epiphany later on, and to be ready for a major life overhaul. It paved the way for facing some ugly truths without me falling apart. It paved the way for wanting, more than ever, to be intentional and purposeful about my health and not treat fitness and good health as afterthoughts or added perks.

I was so done with all the emotional, physical, relational, and psychological garbage that comes with being unfit and unhealthy. It had affected every area of my life. I was tired of giving of myself mentally, emotionally, and of my time to dead end personal pursuits, pointless time-wasting activities, and half-baked endeavors that took but gave nothing meaningful back. It wasn't so much about how people treated me as it was about how I treated myself.

It even affected my relationship with God and my understanding of Him. We are whole beings, mind and body, and the two play off each other in mind blowing you can't even fathom. You just don’t get it, until you do. It’s not something that can be explained. One day you just get that what you’re doing to your body is affecting your mind, and that what goes on in your mind and heart seeps into every cell of your physical being. It just does and humans can’t change that fact just because they don’t like it. We either accept reality and work within it, or we disregard it an suffer the consequences of illness and eventual death, physically and spiritually.

So fully embracing this truth, over the course of 2022 I’ve been making changes and I know this time they’re going to stick. As I write this in October 2022 I’m stuck in a plateau just a shred below my top weight back in the day. I’m super frustrated about it because it’s like both my mind and my body are clinging to the excess fat because that’s all they’ve known. I know I need to be patient and that plateaus are a normal part of the process but when you’ve been unfit for so long, that gnarly weight can’t come off fast enough.

One thing I know for sure is that I will never ever again regain it, and that gives me a measure of peace. I know this time it’s going to stick because after dealing with so much hurt and disappointment over the last few years, my brain and my heart finally broke. They broke in fundamental ways that needed breaking. Not just regarding my health but in every other area of my life too. That’s what happens when you find yourself in a ground zero called your life, wondering what happened, but more importantly, how do I fix it. That’s when I girded my loins and said, “enough”, and thus the whole fresh start and letting go thing. Blah blah blah.

When I first started blogging in 2007 I had created a health and weight loss blog on Google Blogger called Because I’m Totally Worth it. This was in the days before content creation as we know it in 2022. I actually had a lot of great content on there. I was in a really authentic and joyful place in life. I was thriving professionally. It was during the time I lost the first 20 lbs. I regret having deleted it.

But as I embark on what will be my last and final journey to permanent change, I embrace the same spirit as I did back then: knowing I’m worth the effort. That’s why I created #becauseimtotallyworthit; to chronicle my journey in a way that reconnects to and honors that happy and authentic place in my life.

Most importantly, it finally clicked that yes, I am worth it, and that unless I cleansed and rebuilt my own temple into something healthy, fit, and strong, inside and out, no other personal or professional pursuit could be carried out to its full potential. So that’s what I’m doing, and here’s how I’m doing it.

Here’s to never looking back.