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20 somethings, beginner triathlete, diet, fat, health, healthy coping, healthy coping mechanisms, healthy eating, healthy lifestyle, healthy living, obese, obesity, triathlete, triathlon, triathlon newbie, twenty somethings, weight gain, weight loss journey, weightloss
Why not tri?… It’s confession time. I am a 25 year old female, 5’6″ and a whopping 255 pounds.
I woke up just plain old uncomfortable this morning, as I have done every morning for the past 5 years. I have struggled with my weight ever since 3rd/4th grade. This marking the first of four major weight bursts in my life. Three of these times I worked my way back to an acceptable weight range for my body type. It took counting calories, many diets and lifestyle changes. An infinite amount of “last meals” that were made up of fast food/sweets binges. The two things that I remember most about each go, is one, how amazing I felt each time at my self determined weight loss goal, and second, just how freaking hard it was. By hard, I mean some adventurous mishaps in which super glue was the solution to my many bloody scraps. A disgusting amount of sweat. Lastly, some tears, but lets be real, I super glued my wounds…and kept trucking on for another 14 miles, can you say BA (bad ass)? I totally was. I love, admire and respect the amazingly insane and athletic person I was. I welcomed the pain that came from the 4 hour workouts. I pushed through the many injures and the complications that came with them. I was strong. Physically, a highlight was that I could bench press my own weight, 180 pounds. No matter how much brute strength I had, the thing that kept me going through the torn rotator cuff, the broken leg in 2 places, a torn MCL…the list goes…was my mental toughness. When I reached the point of exhaustion and could not continue on, my mental toughness was the thing that pulled me through it. MT was the difference between 1st place and 2nd in my three time reign of state and national champion for my sport in my division.
Somewhere along the way I lost that. I lost the mental toughness that at 4am in the my warm cozy bed, screamed at me, “the off season is what really determines a win or a lose.” Losing my MT remains one of the most devastating things in my life because it wasn’t just about winning accolades. It gave me confidence, purpose, camaraderie, a reason to fight like hell when there was no light. It gave my complex and beautifully broken life meaning.
So with an injury with complications and a year of no weight bearing activity, a break up, withdrawal from university and a broken family that I was cut off from, I ate like a champ. I had to win something in the face of all my loss. It warmed my belly. It expressed my feelings physically that I couldn’t articulate. Food was always there for me. It helped me be the ugliness I felt with in. I was able to disappear inside my adipose winter coat, to the point where even I didn’t see myself. How could I miss myself though?… Oh the irony. So I played the pity card and licked my wounds to a hefty 75 pound weight gain. Sure there were fluctuations. Lose 10 here, gain 15 there. Ultimately, I got to where I am. I can only blame myself. Sure, crappy, horrible and unfair things happened to me through my life. They were great reasons to gain weight and if people knew the whole truth, there would probably be more acceptance and understanding of how I got myself into the hole (or should I say mound) I’m in, but these reasons are just excuses. I made the choice to turn to food in times of distress. I chose to punish myself. I polished off each plate with the scrape of my fork and a burp from my mouth. Just me.
So why not tri? What’s the alternative? Missing out on my life? Being miserable? So this is it. My journey back to life. Living to thrive not living to survive. I must warn you, I will be blunt and crass at times. Sometimes I will fail and lose sight of the goal. One thing I promise however is that I will never be dishonest. I am who I am, beautifully ugly and unavoidably imperfect.
How will I do this? By becoming a triathlete as a vehicle for self discovery. My life has already begun but my story starts here!
Thanks for reading 🙂