Category: life

“Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.”

-Carol Burnett

Let’s go back….way back…Okay, okay not too far back. I was born and raised in Bakersfield California and lived there for 30 years of my life. Now depending on who you ask Bakersfield is either a big city with small town politics or its just a small town, with small town politics.

Some will say Bakersfield is a trap. Most people who are born there never leave and those who do leave always end up coming back. Although it is true there is no place like home, I am pretty certain I wouldn’t move back. Every time I go back to visit,the only part that feels like home is being with my family. When I am not with them it doesn’t feel like I belong there anymore. It is such a strange feeling. A town I once knew like the back of my hand feels like a foreign land. The city where I could go just about anywhere and see familiar faces is now the same place where I feel like an absolute outsider.

“It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

I want to repeat one word for you:

Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone.

You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back.

It is you who will have changed.”

― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road

My dad left when I was just 7 years old. I am a middle child, the only girl, of divorced parents. My mother raised me, I didn’t really have a solid relationship with my dad until I was 15 years old. I grew up pretty poor, a child of welfare and food stamps. Food in our house wasn’t always nutritious, it was whatever we could afford, which wasn’t much. We ate a lot of ground beef, government cheese, nasty peanut butter, the label had no information, was simply labeled peanut butter in bold black letters, cheap junk food, potatoes with every meal, and don’t forget the rice.

I was a child who wore hand me downs and never had brand new anything. But my mom was always there. She was present and she did her best. My mom always put her kids first. She never even dated until all of us kids were grown well into adulthood. Being a witness to her friends putting their boyfriends first ahead of their kids and having it blow up in their faces was a lesson she didn’t want to be a part of.

All of this taught me a lot, like how to be an independent woman and how to take care of myself. Yet, I know when to ask others for help. It taught me how to stay grounded and humble. I am so grateful the the life I have and thank my lucky stars for all I have been blessed with. It has taught me about work ethic. I started working when I was 16 years old, and have never been unemployed. Everything I have in life I have worked for. Nothing has been just handed to me. We all have struggled in some sort of way. But I refuse to be a victim of circumstance and blame my short comings on my childhood. I will continue to focus on the positive and change the negative.

“Gratitude is one of the most powerful human emotions. Once expressed, it changes attitude, brightens outlook, and broadens our perspective.”

― Germany Kent

Here’s the thing, my whole life I’ve always been the fat friend. None of my friends will say that’s but it’s true. It’s how I felt all through junior high, in high school, in college and well into my adult life. The one time in my life when I was my fittest, I was around 23 years old. I had spent over $1,000 on a personal trainer, would spend minimum of 2 hours at the gym 5 days a week and was eating maybe 1000 calories a day. I still weighed in at 180lbs and was wearing a size 11 in pants.

I was in a relationship where I was fat shamed. A lot. I would ask him to go to the gym with me and he would say when you’re at my level I’ll go with you and other moronic crap. So when I finally got tired of it, I decided to go on strike from working out and not too long after that I gained about 20lbs back and the relationship tanked pretty quickly.

I’ve always been outgoing. The majority of the time I felt confident in who I was as a person. So I would never leave the house without my hair done, or without make up on. Because by God if I was going to be over weight I was going to be cute while doing it. I was that girl, you know the one, you hear guys talk about her all the time, she’s chunky, but she has a great personality. Or she’s pretty, for a chunky girl. I always looked like a chunky girl on the outside but, I didn’t feel like one on the inside.

Fast forward, my husband has a level of unconditional love for me that you read about. He has always, told me how beautiful I am. Hair a mess, stinky breath, mix matched clothes, whatever it is, he will look at me and say “you’re so pretty” but it came to a point where I was tired of feeling like crap. I was starting to feel like I was chunky, that I was overweight. I was tired all the time. I couldn’t sleep more than 6 hours at a time because it hurt my body. I was more comfortable standing than I was sitting.

Every time I had an health issue or female issue doctors would tell me I just needed to lose weight. You just need to lose weight. But no one told me how. Just that I needed to do it. So I would try. I would go back to that low calorie diet, the one I paid $1,000 to learn about. I would do nothing but drink meal replacement shakes and it would take me months just to lose 10lbs.

It wasn’t until my new doctor tested me for insulin resistance and suggested trying eating keto that things started to change. After 2 weeks I started sleeping better. I had energy and wasn’t falling asleep at 8pm. And after I lost 15lbs in a month I was in disbelief. And now I am down 45lbs and down 3 pant sizes. I feel so much better. I cannot believe how horrible I felt before. I am just taking it one meal at a time, one day at a time towards being better tomorrow than I was today.