It’s harder to win an uphill battle when you’re fat

For my entire life, I have struggled with my body and my weight. I have always been a “big girl” and even at my smallest, I was still, technically, “obese” (according the horrible and not very helpful, BMI scale). But I was happy in the 160s, the “skinniest” I’ve ever been since my early teens.

The image on the left is me at my heaviest in college; on the right is me from a few years ago. I’m slowing creeping back up to that college weight.

My goal, for as long as I’ve made weight goals, has been to get to 145. As my approach to 30 is speeding up, I worry I’ll never make this number in my lifetime. It just gets harder and harder to lose weight.

Lately, I have just had enough. My steady weight gain has really hindered my life. Just walking a few miles has become a hard task, with me having to stop every 100 feet or so because of excruciating shin-splits. It’s embarrassing and I feel a heavy shame because of it. I wasn’t always like this, and I’ve never had this much trouble just WALKING in my entire life!

Mr. LL has his own body issues, and while I see him as healthy and strong, he too wants to be healthier. So, together we’ve started to make changes in our lifestyles.

This is a photo from maybe a month ago (Mr. LL’s mom, Mr. LL and I). I just look at it and go, “ugh, the weight”

For one, no more sodas. Well, at least not like we had been doing it. One or two diet sodas a week is a vast improvement to the 5 full calorie, sugar loaded sodas a day we were drinking. Instead, water. Water. Water. Water. We have some sports drinks in the apartment, but mainly for Mr. LL to take to work. We still drink coffee, too.

We’ve drastically upped the produce intake in our diets. I don’t think I had one meal this past week that didn’t have a fruit or veggie in it (and as a main feature of the meal, at that). Mr. LL is trying to do a low-carb, more-protein approach to his eating; I, on the other hand, am just going for balance and low caloric intake (or really, balanced caloric intake with my exercise).

Speaking of exercise, we’ve taken to walking along the levee after work. It’s dark, sure, and there were a few nights where it was really cold/windy up there. But we just push on. Mr. LL will run part of the time while I walk. He’s sweet and encouraging, however, it took him a minute to realize that I don’t want to run before I can walk, 😉 . Each night I try to make it one mile further than I did the night before (which actually adds two miles, since we do out and back). I even pushed through the shin-split pain one night and it went away by the time I reached my extra mile.

It truly is a struggle, and I worry for my success at this latest attempt. I just know my cycle. I get fed up, get excited to “get fit” and then after a couple weeks, my old, unhealthy lifestyle slowly creeps back into being the day-to-day routine again. I hope to break the cycle this time.