I could spend hours quoting links and such like but I think a more personal story is better... I started exercising almost 6 years ago. I began as a very out of shape and quite frankly overweight individual. Honestly I don't think I realized how overweight I was until I found a picture of myself in my Dad's basement, I just about died from embarrassment. I knew I was a little heavy but not like that. Getting started was hard, I joined up with a series of personal trainers and slowly the inches came off. I kept at it - desperately wanting more, wanting to feel something different. I had gone into losing weight thinking it would change how I thought about myself, how I looked to other people, that it would solve my relationship issues.
It didn't. I was shocked, as silly as that sounds.
I worked even harder - I got militant with my diet. I became a vegan. I will say that veganism like all forms of diets can be healthy - but it was not for me. It was a coping mechanism, a control - and I knew that if I scaled things back and altered things I could lose more weight. And I did. I never got scary skinny, but I do remember a week where that I felt myself having that conversation in my head, if I just trade out one more meal for a shake things will be better. . . In the end I had a life crisis that forced me to leave veganism (nothing to do with veganism but I couldn't cook for myself any more). It was a moment in my life where I relinquished everything, and sure I gained weight, but it was worth it because I had to step back for a period of time. However, in the process I got physically sick. I spent the better part of two year sick, going from one antibiotic or steroid to the next never able to kick anything and continuously getting worse. I struggled to walk up stairs without pain and feeling exhausted. I pushed on - I still trained for a marathon, I even ran a half marathon with a serious sinus infection. I was all about the pain, I keep justifying that it was part of the process - it was all about about pushing through. I might have been fit, I may have even been losing weight but I wasn't healthy and I really was not happy.
Things went progressively downhill after my Fall 2009 marathon, and I ended up being tested for everything, and I mean everything. In the end there were no answers and progressively less I could do and even less I could eat - I was living off very little, and what I could eat was not exactly low calorie - goat milk for example. I gained about 10 to 15 pounds due to diet and lack of activity. Things started to get tight and I started to get depressed. I was gaining back what I had fought to lose and I couldn't do anything about it.
Eventually I got the eating part figured out, and then did a lot of acupuncture in time I started being able to handle a walk and now almost two years later I'm back to running.
Sure I'm soft in a lot of place, sure I would love to have avoided the weight gain. But I learned something in the process - it is an honour to eat and prepare whole-food meals for myself. It is a blessing to be able to go for a run, even the post run burpies are a gift. It is a gift to feel pain from exertion and not from getting out of bed. My perspective has changed - life is worth fighting for, but you need to know what you are gaining and losing beyond the pounds.
So as you start your running goals and weight loss goals - consider how those goals contribute to your whole life and not just your ability to wear a bikini this summer.
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