5th Anniversary of retirement­­­!!!

Five years ago today, on July 31, 2011, I drove away from my retirement luncheon and never looked back at the place where I had worked for almost 24 years.

Some years before, I was promoted to management and although I liked the extra money the new position paid, I hated the job itself.  It was a rude awakening that not everybody possesses work ethics and I hated being a babysitter to those adults who are lazy and/or incompetent.  For example, I spent about two years counselling a 45-year-old woman who had been working for decades that she needed to show up to work every day or take leave when she didn't report to work!  Seriously?  I hated that part of the job, not to mention the overwhelming administrative duties that kept me in front of my computer for at least 10 hours a day.  As if I wasn't sedentary enough already, now I barely moved thanks to my new position's demands.

The personal cost of the extra funds became too great in the end.  Not only was I miserable, I was stressed all the time, I started having serious medical issues, and I reached an all-time high weight of 306 lbs.  Losing weight was impossible at this point.  The vicious cycle of unhappiness, stress, and being morbidly obese resulted in my always being mentally drained, having no energy whatsoever to do much of anything, and losing the desire to change things.  I stuck it out because it was an end to a means:  a higher pension once I retired.  Financially speaking, it would have been more prudent to keep working another few years, but I felt my job was killing me.  It was a scary proposition to retire because it's such a final decision, but I had to leave for my own sanity and survival.

Although I was glad to be retired, it was the first time in 35 years that I didn't have a job and it felt very strange, like my normal wasn't normal anymore.  Every once in a while I'd panic, thinking, "Oh, my God!  I don't have a job!  How am I going to pay the bills???!!!"  Then reason would quickly set in and I'd remind myself, "Oh, yeah.  I'm getting a pension.  I'll be okay."  For the first month or so, I felt like I was cheating the system.  I mean, how can I have money coming in when I'm not working?  It didn't compute.  I'm extremely fortunate that I was able to retire in my early 50s with a pension. 

By the time I retired, I had been living an incredibly unhappy existence and I didn't know how to get out of it.  I weighed 300 lbs. for over a decade and I was incapable of losing any weight for long, my left knee screamed in pain 24/7, and I was dealing with medical issues to boot.  I had slowly become a virtual hermit because I had no desire to walk out my front door because moving was difficult due to my size and painful thanks to my knee, not to mention hating how I looked.  I was delusional in thinking that once I retired, the weight would magically come off and my life would improve instantly.  Instead, now without a job to force me out of the house, I didn't have to leave and I found myself stuck in a boring rut with no end in sight:  I slept a lot, I was watching tons of TV, and a year and a half later, I still weighed about 300 lbs. and I was still miserable.

By late 2012, I was 52 years old, had been retired about a year and a half, and nothing had changed other than the stress from working was gone.  That in itself was a relief, but the rest remained the same.  I was not enjoying life at all.  I was bored and the only thing I had to look forward to was more TV watching the following day.  I remember wondering what the point of life was.  I wasn't suicidal, but I realized I was just waiting for death.  What future did I have to look forward to?  What reason was there to get up every day and get dressed?  The weeks turned into months and I started panicking when this simple question kept playing in my head like a broken record:  "Where will I be in 10 years?"  It was a dire existence and living like that another 10 years was utterly horrifying.

I reluctantly signed onto Weight Watchers' ("WW") online program in late 2012 without any expectation that I would ever succeed.  And if I did succeed, I knew it would be temporary because I always gained back any weight I managed to lose.  But I had to do something and WW was the easiest and cheapest way to go, plus I had used it before so I had nothing new to learn.  I wasn't in the mood to learn a new diet program.  

I often laugh now when I remember how I felt when I clicked on the WW button to sign up.  I remember feeling complete negativity about the whole process, that I was wasting my money, and that I would never succeed.  But I was desperate.  Yet I wasn't really interested and, in fact, it took me a couple of weeks after signing up before I actually started implementing the WW program.  

As I explained throughout my blog, I got stuck in a 16-month plateau after losing about 50 lbs. through WW and I thought my journey had ended.  And then…I met Flaminia ("Fla"), a young woman I hired to train me once a week, and that fateful meeting would eventually lead to a completely new, thinner me.  I sometimes regret retiring when I did because it would have been more financially prudent to have stayed a few more years.  But the reality is that what good is money if you're miserable, sick, and extremely unhappy?  Had I stayed to work a few more years, I would never have met Fla, and I know I'd never be where I am today.  It was a process that had to happen exactly how it did and any deviation from that would have led me down a different path that would not have been as successful.  Of that, I'm positive.

If someone had told me then, on that fateful day, that clicking on that button to join WW online was going to be the beginning of an amazing journey full of self discovery and change that would eventually result in a completely new me, I would never have believed it.  Not in a million years!  It's hard for me to believe even today how far I've come, and I'm not just referring to my physical appearance either. 

BUT here I am…

…five years later and I'm a completely different person inside and out from the person who drove away from that retirement luncheon.  When I think of the me back then, it's like seeing a separate person, someone I don't know anymore, a stranger I once talked to.  

I've since lost about 140 lbs., and I'm so active now that I have to force myself to take a day off to let my body rest whereas before I had to force myself to get up and move.  My diet is the healthiest it's ever been which includes no fast foods whatsoever, no sodas, very little processed foods, and very few empty calories - foods that were my staples before.  

Losing the weight and exercising regularly has resulted in a new body I didn't know existed underneath the cushion of morbid obesity.  I now have muscle definition I never had before. Today I'm strong and I can do physical things I could never do before (like push ups).  Exercising is now part of my daily schedule and I no longer have to force myself to do it.  I dare say I even enjoy it now whereas it was always a dreaded and hated chore before.  More importantly, I now push myself to try different physical activities no matter how hard they may seem whereas before I always gave up before even trying.  During training, I find myself saying, "I want to try that" because I want to see what more I can do whereas before my automatic response was always, "I can't" before I even tried.  In fact, Fla forbid me from saying those words soon after we started training together and it wasn't until she did so that I realized just how often I said, "I can't."  What's worse, I actually convinced myself that I couldn't.

Who knew when I joined WW where it would eventually lead me.  It hasn't been easy by any means, but it's been a marvelous journey in many ways.  The best part is that I'm not done yet.  I keep striving to improve myself and my life.  The new me doesn't give up either.  When Fla, who was an incredible influence on my life, moved to New York in January 2016, I hired another trainer, Tunde, who's been the perfect transition for me.  Tunde's taught me a lot in the short time we've been training and I continue to see results in my body and well being thanks to her.  I've been very lucky to have met such wonderful ladies who've been so instrumental in the creation of the new me.

As time passed, the heaviness from morbid obesity not only disappeared from my physical body but it also lifted from my emotional and spiritual self, too.  Little by little as I saw success in my weight-loss journey, I began to evolve as a person, my confidence grew, and I started dealing with emotional issues that had weighed me down (pun intended) my entire life.  I no longer allow that negative recorder in my head to run my life that led me to years of binging or giving up on myself in every respect.  Instead, I started confronting those issues in an effort to understand them so I could replace the negative recorder with positive feedback.  It's a process I still struggle with every day, but I continue to see success.  My confidence is higher today than it's ever been.  Today I'm happier and healthier than I had been in decades before my journey began.

The reality is that as humans, we continue to struggle and evolve our entire lives.  I don't think it ever ends while we are breathing.  The choice we have is which path are we going to take:  to love ourselves enough to be the best we can be no matter how hard that is to achieve or to give up on ourselves and let misery and an unhealthy existence take over.

As I look back during these past five years, I marvel about how far I've come in every single sense.  I feel 20 years younger in body, mind, and soul.  Life is so much better than it had been for at least two decades.  I enjoy every day.  I now understand what people mean when they say, "Live every day to its fullest."  I have fun doing nothing special (like running errands) because I feel great and I'm happy.  These days I want to go out, see people, and do things.  I have plans for my future.  I want to travel and no longer have to worry about fitting in an airplane seat or being unable to walk around once I get to my destination.  I'm no longer waiting for death.  More importantly, my relationship with food has completely changed forever. 

I hope the next five years will be happy ones as I continue on my personal journey.  That, of course, remains to be seen and, unfortunately, those years will fly by.  However, I'm confident that I'll never, ever go back to where I was before.  I can't.  If I ever did, I know I'll die emotionally and spiritually.  Now that I'm on this side of the scale, life is just too good to ever go back.