Step 1: get your head on straight

Over the past couple of years, I've lost over 50lbs, over 40 of that in less than a year. So I get asked a lot how I did it.

I can tell folks are almost always disappointing when I tell them "diet and exercise". It's a boring explanation.

But the truth is that I would have never been able to do it without getting healthy on the inside first.

Sure. Other people lose weight  and they are still super fucked up in the head and/or are still generally unhappy people. We all know those folks. It's proof that merely getting skinny doesn't make life any better. 

A lot of those folks end up unhealthy on the outside again. Lots of them are the yo-yo dieters or the people who develop eating disorders or the people who no matter how much weight they lose, they still don't look especially great. 

So when I really talk to people about what I did, I will always mention that the first step was internal. It was getting my head and my heart straight. The first commitment I made to myself was 6 months of going to therapy. No excuse.  And not half-assing it........not going once or twice over the course of 6 months and caling it good. Not saying "Ugh, I can't afford it this week" over sips of my Starbucks mocha. Not calling and canceling because I was too tired to go. No. Six months of going. Weekly. And taking those sessions and stewing on them. Digging in to them. Getting homework from my therapist and doing it.

None of this started being about losing weight. I had accepted my weight. I was fine with it. I figured I was who I was and I should learn to love it. And I did. My bigger problems were in why I got in my marriage and why I stayed in it and the relationships I had with people and what kind of parent I was. THOSE were the things that needed fixing. Not my waistline.

But once I truly tackled those and began the hard work of fixing my  heart and soul........all of the sudden I loved myself enough to be truly good to myself. Because I realized I really was worth it.

my story, part 1

My story isn't unusual. And I've heard worse. Sometimes I hear the stories of others and I feel lucky my own story is only as bad as it is.

I was born to unprepared, young, poor parents and raised accordingly.

Well, maybe that's not true.

See, my mother hated me. No, really, she did. She told me nearly every day. Can you imagine looking at your 4 or 8 or 14 year old daughter and telling her you hated her? I can't.

I was raised to have an impaired self-esteem. It was evident early on. Evident to the girls in school who bullied me and evident to the boys who either wanted nothing to do with me or who merely wanted to use me.

I did what lots of damaged people do.....I became an adult and developed some very bad habits. Bad relationship habits, bad health habits, bad everything habits. But, hey, I was an adult and it was my choice, right?

I got into an unhealthy marriage with an unhealthy person. And it's really easy to start blaming things on other people when you have another adult around. When you look at pictures of me from that time in my life, I look terrible. And it wasn't just the weight. I didn't start my marriage heavy, but I looked bad. I looked unhappy. I looked unhealthy.

Getting out of my marriage was my turning point. That was my personal rock-bottom that everyone talks about. Actually, it was the year immediately following the split-up.....the worst year of my life.

I have no idea what it is that was the exact trigger, and I don't even know that I had any profound specific realization. Something inside me just knew that being that unhappy sucked. And I was treating myself really REALLY badly.


I did not start this journey by saying I wanted to be skinny or a size six. I just wanted to be happy. I was so desperately unhappy and I was so tired of it. There were no body goals...just soul goals.

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My first step was going back to therapy. I am a firm believer in good therapy. I make no bones about my personal bad experience with "counselors".....I will always tell my friends to find a good psychologist or psychiatrist. Not for the drugs, but for the goals. 

From therapy, I learned I would have to change behaviors. I had to stop treating myself badly. I had to stop telling myself I was not worth good things. I did some very cheesey things. I subscribed to positive newsletters. I wrote down inspirational quotes and taped them to my mirrors. I prayed every morning. 

It's amazing the power words have. Even words you say to yourself day in and day out. 

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My journey started with treating myself better. Every day. Until I started to realize "hey....I deserve this. hey....it feels so much better to be happy". 

There were small "ah-ha!" moments in which I saw progress. Telling myself something over and over every day started to sink in. Chores I made myself do became habits I enjoyed and took comfort in. I started re-mapping my brain. 

And then it happened. I loved myself. Warts and fat and all.

Oddly enough, what came out of finally and honestly loving myself was realizing that I was worth being treated better than I had been treating myself. And then it was just a domino effect...I started treating myself like I deserved, I started getting healthier. I started getting healthy on the inside, and I started looking healthy on the outside.

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This is going to be about my journey. I don't think that I'm especially special or that I overcame anything that you can't overcome. I hope that in sharing this story, maybe other people, especially other women and moms, will realize they are worth more than they think. They are worth more than how they treat themselves.

I'm writing this as if you were my friend. Sometimes it might be uncomfortable, but friends just don't sit by and watch friends do harmful things, right?