This is my first recorded episode in what I hope to be a long running podcast to help dig deep into wellness in both the mind and body. In this first episode I wanted to read a short synopsis of my story, in later episodes I will try and avoid just reading from a document but I felt like this episode would be the exception. I want to be as raw and authentic as I can be so please bear with me while I get used to speaking on a microphone and then turning it into an episode. I'll include some of the text from what I have written to give you a sense of the direction of this podcast. Please visit https://www.wellnesswithkindness.org/ to learn more as I post on a blog twice a week along with my podcast episode being released every weekend.
I walked into my doctors office one day and she told me I was pre-diabetic, my cholesterol was high, blood pressure was through the roof and I had terrible sleep apnea. My doctor said in order to alter my health trajectory I needed to seriously make an effort.
I then went to a holiday party for work and got dressed up in a nice suit I bought before starting my current job. I noticed that it was really tight on me but it still fit. I then went to the party and mingled with everyone there. At some point in the night my team and I took a group photo. Once I saw the photo from the party I realized I didn’t like what I saw. I was the most overweight I had ever been weighing in around 289, wearing a 2XL and a waist size of 44. I looked at myself and realized that in order to become who I really wanted to be I first needed to change my life and lose the weight I’ve been carrying around the majority of my life. I was ready to look in the mirror and love what I saw instead of seeing someone I hated.
My journey should have been out of love and compassion but instead was the exact opposite. Working through things in therapy has helped me see this and much more. I know now what I did and how I did it was out of necessity of my own sanity, but by no means was it something that's sustainable or healthy long term. I took the calorie deficit model to the extreme and was malnourishing my body because of it. But what I did correctly was I didn’t try to change my life all at once. I didn’t just start working out 5-6 days a week, eating the healthiest food I could find and thinking I could sustain that for the rest of my life. My personal trainer, who I will bring up a lot in the next few episodes, showed me that everything should be done in small incremental changes, which over time add up to significant life changes that I could continue to do long term.
Something else I got from my trainer was to try and think of food as calories in and calories out. To lose weight I needed to stay in a deficit over a long period of time. And this worked, I started losing just one or two pounds a week for a while but as I got stronger and exercised more (without increasing my calorie intake) I started losing 5 pounds a week consistently. Health wise losing a pound or two a week is very healthy, it allows your body to constrict skin but losing it too quickly your body has a harder time keeping up.
