My Story
It’s taken me a long time to reach the point in my life where I truly care about being well. Far too long perhaps. Now at the age of 35 I can truly say that I feel awful and I want to change that.
For my whole adult life leading up to this point, I generally did little physical activity and I ate whatever I wanted without worrying about the consequences. I still felt mostly OK so surely those choices weren’t affecting me too badly.
Now, after going through the stresses that the year 2020 put us all through, I can see that even though I felt OK, I didn’t have the resilience to pull through those challenges and come out fine on the other side. I felt broken.
When lockdowns began I was living alone. My family was only a 10 minute car ride away, but with both of my parents being very vulnerable to infection, we made the decision that it was best for me to not visit. I began working from home and doing all of my shopping online and with curbside pickup. I spent 2 whole months without interacting with another person face to face and this had such a huge impact on me. I would cry on a daily basis over things that normally wouldn’t be a big deal, I would use food as a coping mechanism and I would sit on the couch for hours on end just watching TV to keep my mind off of everything.
Eventually, as restrictions were eased, I did get to see my family again but the stresses weren’t over and the damage I was doing to my self kept adding up. After a lifetime of struggling with my weight, I had reached my heaviest. I hated the way I looked and just getting around was becoming more and more of a challenge.
In 2022 I made a big lifestyle change in an attempt to start feeling better. I began working with an online personal trainer to do at home workouts and completely revamp my diet. After working with her for a total of 16 weeks I had lost around 70 pounds and felt pretty good, but these changes didn’t feel sustainable to me at all. I was forcing myself to stick to the parts of the program that weren’t working for me just to see the results. Then another setback hit.
I began to deal with symptoms of what I would later find out was inflammatory bowel disease. I couldn’t leave the house for more than a few minutes at a time and my energy levels plummeted due to severe anemia. I couldn’t have exercised even if I wanted to. I spent almost a year in this state waiting for a diagnosis and finding a treatment option that was going to work for me.
My husband and I just before our wedding in May 2024.
In the midst of all of this I had other major changes in my life. I met my future husband and fell in love. Somehow, while feeling like absolute garbage, I managed to enter into my first real relationship and had a whirlwind romance. After just a few weeks together we were engaged and a couple of months after that I sold my house and moved an hour away from my family into a house he owns along with his parents and sister. All of these changes were great and exciting but going through it so quickly while also dealing with my illness has meant stress just kept piling up in my life and I had no way to deal with it.
Now, I am a few months in to living with my husband and his family and we are in the process of having a small house for just the two of us built in the backyard. Within a couple of months, we will finally have more private space than just a couple of bedrooms and will have our own kitchen and bathroom. Just the prospect of being able to cook for myself again has inspired me to learn more about nutrition and wellness. I have started getting active again and am deciding how I want to feed my family. I am treating this as a fresh start to avoid making the same mistakes that I did in the past. I’ve started seeking out learning opportunities so I can make the most of this chance to turn things around.
This is what I hope to share on this site. I am still very much a beginner on this path to wellness but I want to learn and share as much as I can. I will share what works and what doesn’t work. We are all different so what works for me might be completely different than what works for you. My hope is that you can take what you like and leave what you don’t. Pick a couple of small steps to get yourself started on your path to wellness and then when you are ready, come back for more.
