When Julian asked me to tell my story I don’t think he realized what he was getting himself into. To understand where I am now, one has to understand how I got here. In 1992 I was diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease called Avascular Necrosis. Before this I was in great shape, but little did I know how debilitating my life would become. I had my first operation in October of ’92, this would be one of 11 on my left leg and it would take me almost 2 ½ years, physical therapy 5 days a week for almost 3-4 hours a day to learn to walk again. I made it through though, but walked with a cane for many years. My bone disease went into remission and life was good. Married a wonderful man in 1998, got pregnant with twins in 2000 and due to my past medical history was put on complete bed rest a month after being pregnant. I delivered two beautiful girls, 3 months premature. Along with this stressor in my life my husband unfortunately took to drinking heavily during my pregnancy. Now I had a husband I was worried about and two critically ill children who would spend the next 3 ½ months in the NICU at Northside. As I concentrated on the girls, my husband began to get worse and worse. After the babies came home, our firstborn began having seizures and was diagnosed with cerebral palsey shortly thereafter. So now the pounds begin to come on. I was a chef by profession before I was married and I loved to cook. My husband was not there for me, my children were so sick, so food became my very very good friend. I fed myself well, and my breast milk proved it. Rich and creamy. My girls began to thrive. We had a very difficult year medically with the children and after 18 months of constant medical care, my husband and I got a much needed break. We were able to begin counseling to try to put our marriage back together. Oh but not a week after the twins were off most of their meds and monitors (they would be 18 months old) guess what? I was pregnant. Guess what? My husband could not handle all of this and the counseling stopped and the drinking got worse. I was completely down for this pregnancy and my husband was usually MIA. After the birth of our third daughter my bone disease came out of remission, I became quite ill, and found out that they would need to remove a good portion of the bones in my right leg. So here I am with 3 children under the age of 2 the first of 9 operation and a husband that was an alcoholic and running our livelihood into the ground. I would be in a wheelchair for the next year.
It is amazing to me how low I got. Depression set in, I really thought some days I would not make it. I lived with horrible debilitating pain and felt so alone. But I was not!! We will get to that. Long story short, my husband then turned to drugs, became an addict on top of his alcoholism issue and wiped out all of our bank accounts. I then had to turn to my family and ask for help. I myself had been trying to hide all that was going on in our family. In 2006 I asked my husband to leave and told him he would have to go to rehab if he had any hope of saving our marriage. I had hoped and prayed it would work. I loved him so. But after 6 months in rehab, he got out but fell off the wagon shortly thereafter.
So now it is me, my three girls, my wonderful family and friends. I had blossomed to a lovely and uncomfortable 191 pounds. This makes me sick to publicly say what my weight was. I was in pain, I looked horrible. Stress will kill you. Honestly it will. Then I came to this wonderful gym called SFX, I finally decided I had to take back control of my life and my body. I honestly wanted to feel good. So I began working out. Not crazy at first. I took baby steps, doable steps. I did not deprive myself of good food. If I wanted chocolate, I ate it. Then I would start back again. One day at a time. My trainer, God bless her, Shelley always keeps my workout fun. A tyrant she is, but fun. LOL!! For me this whole weight loss thing is about three things. God, religion, and faith. I realized God gave me one body and I really need to take care of it. God would also be by my side and get me through all this mess. I am telling you people if you don’t believe in Him, talk to me about my story. It is truly by God’s grace, that I got through all of this. The trials and tribulations He has brought into my life have made me a stronger and better person. Second on this weight loss thing is religion, what I mean by this is you have to be religious about moving!! You must workout. You must do cardio. Now I am physically limited on what I can do, but hey I won the Phat Pool. That just keeps me going. I still have a ways to go but I will get there!! Last is faith. Have faith in yourself that you can do this. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, just do it! Baby steps. I say to myself I gotta lose 10 pounds. Then after that I say to myself, I gotta lose 10 pounds. So I did well at the Phat Pool because I worked my butt off. What did I eat? I do 6 meals a day. I try not to eat white food. You know rice, potatoes, bread, sugar. (Remember I try, if I slip no biggie, so don’t beat yourself up) I eat lots of color!!! I love color!! Blueberries, strawberries, spinach, mango, little meat, milk, yogurt, protein drinks. I have found that if I keep every meal to around 200-300 calories I am good. I am a foodie, but now I try to eat to live and maybe once a week eat whatever I want.
I want to say that I have worked hard and still have a lot of hard work let, but I could not do this without my God, without the support of my family and friends, without SFX (thanks Julian) and without my wonderful trainer and friend Shelley, thanks Shelley, I love ya! Keep on pushing me. Good luck to all of you taking this journey to Good Health and God Bless you all!!
