My blog turns 1 year old!

As I explained in "Why a blog?" I decided to heed my trainer's advice and write a blog in the hopes that my experience may help someone else lose weight, too.  Perhaps someone can learn from my mistakes and save themselves some grief, I thought, or perhaps someone can apply something I learned along the way that will help them succeed, too.

More than anything I hoped that my words reflected the exuberance I felt at finally being able to do something about my weight and that this alone would motivate others to do what I did so they can feel the same way, too.  As I tell anyone who listens, "If I can do it, ANYONE can!"  Think about it:  I was obese for more than 30 years and for more than a decade of that time I was morbidly obese weighing 300 lbs.  If I could finally lose the weight in my 50s after having failed for so many years, ANYONE can succeed!!!! 

Although I was happy to share my story if anyone asked, I'm not one to preach to people what they should be doing or not doing.  Each person's journey is unique to them.  Each person must find the commitment they need to undertake such an enormously difficult task.  But the seed was planted to share my story and so one day I started jotting down some of the thoughts that had been circling in my head for many years about the whole weight thing.  For example, I always wondered if "normal" people had any inkling what it feels like to be morbidly obese.  Do they realize how hard and humiliating it is?  Do they realize that some of us have problems fitting places they take for granted, such as a booth in a restaurant?  Would they even care if they did know?  Probably not.  This became a post I titled "What it means to be 'morbidly obese' " in which I explained my perspective about the whole thing and shared a few of my humiliating moments.  

When Flaminia ("Fla"), my trainer, broached the subject of my starting a blog, I told her I had nothing to say about losing weight.  The information was out there already and had been forever.  I had nothing new to add.  I had no gimmicks, no tricks, it was all about managing my food and later starting an exercise program.  Simple.  However, as time passed, it became a journey involving so much more than "just" managing my food and "just" exercising and I've been sharing my discoveries that I refer to as my DUH moments or my forest-for-the-trees thing throughout my blog.  Everything and everyone goes on my blog.  It could be someone making a remark about their own struggles or commenting on my journey, a question they ask, or something I see or hear and instantly it becomes a post for my blog.    

When I first told Fla that I was writing something for this blog thing, she insisted that I send her what I had so far so she could read it.  I told her I wasn't finished yet and she pointed out to me, "You do realize that a blog never ends, right?"  It never ends?  How could I possibly have more than a few things to say about losing weight?  That's when I'd become overwhelmed and stopped writing for a few weeks until Fla or someone else told me I should share my story in a blog.  What I forgot is that I'm a talker.  I always find something to say (whether it's relevant or not is another matter) even when there's nothing to say. When I started my blog, I suddenly had an outlet for expressing all the thoughts, worries, anxieties, and negative experiences I ever had about being overweight along with the wonderful opposite when I succeeded.  

After I completed my first entry which would eventually become, "My weight through the years," I realized I was way too embarrassed to send it to Fla for her to read.  Then it dawned on me, "Wait a minute.  If I'm too embarrassed to send this to Fla, the one person who knows everything and has seen me at my worst, how in the world am I going to post it on the internet for my friends to read?  And, oh, my God, what about strangers  reading about my failures and embarrassing moments?  What utter humiliation!!!!"  Whenever this realization occurred to me, I'd stop writing again for a few weeks until once again someone told me to share my story.  I eventually came to the conclusion that "Embarrassment be damned!"  My weight failures were obvious to the world every time I walked out my front door.  Like I said before, you can't hide a serious weight problem:  your obesity is in your face, your arms, your hands, your body.  Every time you walk out your front door, the evidence is clear to the entire world that you have an eating disorder.  So why not share my success now that I can be considered "normal" especially if it can help someone else?

It was then I sent my first written item to Fla for her review.  I honestly thought she was going to say, "Vilma, this isn't what a blog is about.  You have it all wrong!"  I had never seen a blog before so I wasn't even sure what was supposed to go on a blog, but I figured Fla would give me some advice how to change it because she's young and very much into social media, unlike me (on both counts).  Instead, she contacted me and couldn't say enough good things about what she read and urged me to continue and publish it online.  With a little encouragement from her, the words flowed and it took me several weeks to write, edit, re-edit, and re-edit some more before I set up my blog the way I wanted it to appear.  It also took me a couple of days playing with the website to figure out how to set it up and get it to look like I envisioned in my head.  Within a week and a half, I was writing code to change something on the template I was using to fit my needs.  I had no idea how to write code for the internet, but I researched it, figured it out, and got the template to do what I wanted.  The rest is history and in late August/mid September 2015, I published this blog.

The funniest thing was after I published it, I immediately asked myself, "What now?"  I expected people to start reading it immediately but then it dawned on me that I didn't know how to get it out there.  How would people know it existed?  I had no one to send it to and I felt a bit pretentious to send it to my friends asking them to read my voluminous words.  I wasn't on social media and I don't know that many people, was I supposed to start doing mass emailings like those annoying telemarketers professing, "Read my blog!?"  There's a TV commercial that came to mind about a group of people who set up a website for their business and they sat around the screen once they published the website waiting to see if anyone placed an order for whatever they were selling.  They all cheered when the counter started showing orders being placed by customers but their elation soon turned to dismay when the counter numbers kept flying higher and higher.  They instantly realized that they were overwhelmed with orders and how could they ever fill them all.  I expected that to happen with my blog, that the counter would keep ticking up, but it didn't.  The counter remained at 0 views for quite a long while.  Ultimately the only one who was reading it was Fla.

By the time I published this blog, all my friends were well versed on Fla although they've never met her.  Whenever my friends and I chatted or emailed each other, the subject of Fla would come up because she became such an integral part of my life.  They all knew that Fla urged me to start a blog.  Several of my friends asked to read my blog and some did.  A few friends never looked at it although they asked for the link.  One friend read one entry and said, "I get the point" and hasn't read anything further (yes, she's still a friend).  Other friends read it and passed it along to others to read.  A friend's husband who read it suggested I post it on MyFitnessPal.com ("MFP"), the website I use to track my meals, and so I did, under Community where members post whatever they want.   

A few MFP members read my entry and looked over my blog, but it wasn't very many people.  I did get a few really nice messages from people saying that they enjoyed what I wrote.  Everyone was incredibly supportive nonetheless, but I did get somewhat negative feedback from two people.  They both told me in no uncertain terms that (a) I was relying too much on exercising and I was particularly relying too much on Fla for my success and seemed to be under the presumption that I'd fail in the end after my reliance on these two waned; and (b) my eating habits were too restrictive and unreasonable. 

At first I was dumbfounded followed by becoming indignant and then ultimately laughing at their comments.  It has been my experience in life that no matter what you do, no matter how successful you are, no matter how happy you are, there's always someone to come along to tell you that what you're doing is not good enough or that you're doing it wrong altogether.  I responded to these two naysayers in this way:

(a)  perhaps I was relying too much on exercise, but so what if I was?  I rather rely on exercise than on food to make me happy like I did my entire life before.  Look where food got me in the end and look where exercising is getting me now.  As for relying on Fla too much, thank God for her because she turned my life around and taught me what I needed to do to be healthier and happier.  I realized she wouldn't be there forever but what she taught me will last a lifetime.

As for (b), after living decades in obesity and ultimately in morbid obesity, of course I had to restrict my eating habits to lose the weight.  How could I not?  There was no way I could keep eating the way I was and succeed.  My eating habits before were not only keeping me in obesity, it was an unhealthy way to live.  The consequences of my former diet were destroying me emotionally, spiritually, and medically and only disaster awaited me in the end if I didn't overhaul my lifestyle.  I also suggested to these two naysayers that they hadn't really read my blog because if they had, they would have read where I talk about eating anything I want, including "bad foods" but only in moderation.  Considering I eat just about everything and anything, I still don't understand why they thought my diet is unreasonable.  The only thing I can assume is that they didn't read my entire blog or, if they did, they didn't understand what I was saying.

I did note that one of these naysayers mentioned that she had lost a lot of weight before by relying "too much" on exercise and restricting her foods, but eventually she gained it all back.  It was clear to me that she was confusing gaining the weight back to having relied too much on "unreasonable tactics" rather than realizing that she merely gave up.  The one thing I've repeated ad nauseam throughout my blog is to NEVER GIVE UP!  No matter what happens, no matter whether you lose your way momentarily, no matter what the scale shows, you can't give up.  The key is to keep brushing yourself off and continue plodding along.

Recently I posted the link to my blog again on MFP and received an overwhelming response.  Over 1,900 people saw my entry on MFP and the views to my blog spiked because of it.  I received quite a few messages from people and they were all just lovely.  Some people congratulated me, others told me they were proud of me even though we never met, and others told me my words resonated with them.  Some described their own journeys, too, which I always appreciate to hear.  Others said I inspired them to keep going on their particular weight-loss journey which is an amazing reward to me personally that my efforts might help others.  I really appreciated it that these people took the time to read my words and to also reach out to me to give me their encouragement.  There's nothing like getting positive feedback from others to succeed.  It's amazing what a benefit it is to each of us when someone is kind and supportive.  A little honest encouragement goes a long, long way.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, it's against MFP rules to self-promote or advertise even though I receive no monetary benefit from my blog.  I get it though.  MFP is an incredible website and thousands of people are on it.  Of course it's the perfect environment for people selling stuff to post their links for incredible (free) exposure to the public so MFP has to make sure no one self promotes or advertises.  I thanked the moderator who notified me of my violation, and promised never to post my blog again on MFP.  It's a priceless website and I don't want to ruin it for myself or anyone else.  I still recommend MFP wholeheartedly.  It's an amazing website that has helped more people than I could ever help.

So in any case, my blog is a year old.  What started as an embarrassing venue to share my failures with the world actually turned out to be cathartic.  It got me talking about things I would never have dreamed of discussing, particularly with strangers.  For example, in a million years I would never have told anyone what I weighed or that I reached a size where I could not fit into most restaurant booths or that I couldn't fly because I couldn't fit in the airplane seats.  But now that I'm on this side of the scale, it's okay to share all of that because it's not me anymore.

 

This blog has also kept me honest.  For example, after I posted something about having stayed away from fast foods for over a year, I started craving a burger from one of these establishments.  I don't know why because fast food never tasted that good to me.  I now call it "fake food."  I compare a burger I make at home (thick, juicy, and fresh) with those sold at a fast food place which are thin, colorless, tasteless, frozen and refrozen patties of whatever is in them and the idea of eating the latter grosses me out.  The only reason I ate fast food so often before was because it was convenient and quick, but it wasn't for taste that's for sure.  When I started craving fast food out of the blue, I was appalled at myself and thought, "I can't eat fast food now!  I just posted something on my blog about having given that up, how can I betray what I said?  Impossible!"  The craving lasted a few days, and eventually disappeared.  Perhaps the craving arose when I put it down on   paper - or computer screen as it were - that I didn't eat that kind of food anymore.  Perhaps a little part of me wanted to try it again after saying I hadn't eaten it in so long.  In the end, I didn't let myself (or anyone else) down by giving in and I can honestly say that I haven't eaten fast food in close to two years.  In my neighborhood, I have every fast food name you can think of within walking distance.  I used to visit them every week, usually several times a week.  Now I either walk or ride my bike past these places and I never looked back. 

The double edged sword of this blog is that it exaggerates my brief lapses though.  Whenever I binge (which I continue to struggle with often), I feel like a fraud.  How can I have this blog telling people how I successfully lost weight and then I start eating like a bottomless pit and gaining weight again?  When I started this whole journey, it was for me and me alone.  It never occurred to me that others might benefit from my efforts.  As my journey progressed, the positive reactions, support, and messages I've received from people have been overwhelming.  It's been wonderful and unexpected.  The two words I hear often are that my blog is "hilarious" and "inspiring."  Fla said many times that my blog was hilarious and I always responded, "Gee, I'm so glad that my lifelong failure and pain makes you laugh!"  But, of course, I was joking.  Although I beam with pride when others tell me that my success has helped them in their particular weight-loss journey, the other side of the coin is that this has put pressure on me not to fail.  Suddenly I felt like I wasn't doing this just for me anymore, there were people counting on me not to fail - and this is when I start feeling like a fraud when I lose my way and start gaining weight again.

It is then that I have to remind myself that I'm not a fraud.  I actually did succeed and although I do gain weight now because I continue to struggle with binging particularly when the universe is working against me, I immediately get back on track.  For the past 8 months, despite many binging episodes, I've stayed around the same number on the scale:  between 168 to 175 lbs. which equates to a 131 to 138 lb. total loss from my heaviest.  As I've always said throughout my blog, I've never been perfect with my calories because I can never be perfect where food is concerned.  It's my particular addiction and it's a daily struggle for me not to give in completely to it.  The difference today is that it's easier for me to dust myself off after an indiscretion and get back on track.    

My relationship with food, although it'll be a tug of war for the rest of my life, has invariably changed.  The old me could never recover after losing her way.  The old me would think, "What's the point?  Who cares if I eat 5 pieces of cake instead of 1?  It makes no difference, I'm already fat."  The new me doesn't expect to be perfect where food is concerned so when I do stray, I don't berate myself (too much) and I try to get back on track as soon as possible.  Also, I no longer give up on myself when I stray.  Whenever I see 178 on the scale, I put the brakes on and I get back on track immediately.  I don't ever want to see the 180s on the scale again.  It is a certainty that my weight will always fluctuate, but the key is to keep it in check.

So...happy birthday to my blog!  I hope in the end it helps others to learn from my mistakes, failures, and successes.