I Won't Give Up - Jason Mraz

I don't know how many times I have said this, but if I could just be under 100 kilos, I just know I will be happy and everything will be fantastic.

When I was over 120 kilos and staring head on at 130 kilos, being under 120 kilos seemed like an impossible ask, so I never attempted it, my scales became something sitting in the cupboard and had no batteries. I attempted weight loss programs but I never really seriously stuck with something that would head me in the consistent right direction, and I tried them all. But at 120 kilos, I was sad, I was miserable and everything felt dark all the time. I "appeared happy", but mentally I couldn't have been further from the truth.

The littlest thing, seemed like the biggest injustice and I complained about everything and anything to anybody who would listen. I would be complaining to my grandma, Tara, Lisa, Clare,  I would be on the phone all day, looking for someone to listen and agree with me on how rough my life was, and if that wasn't working for me I hit Facebook too, to let everyone know it wasn't a good day for me. I just felt it was important to keep everyone "up to date", just in case people stopped being interested in me. I was forever looking for other people's validation to tell me I was o-kay because I didn't particularly like myself a whole lot.

When I hung up the phone or put it on Facebook, did I feel any better because I had ranted about it? No it just seemed I was waiting for the next thing to feed that angry fire. I can't imagine I was a great person to be around, someone who sucks up that much negativity , why would you ?  Was it anybody else's problem?

 Oh and then there was Michael, Oh my, how he  put up with that discussing attitude and poor behaviour , I have no idea,  other than he must really love me, that he stuck around !!!! Up, down, up, down. Angry, sad, miserable and a little bit more anger mixed in just in case you didn't know I was pissed off  and that had EVERYTHING to do about how I felt about myself.

Once again,  I hear myself saying .......  it's the weight, if I am under 100 kilos then I will be happy, like there is some magical happiness meter, that says, congratulations your numbers now read 99.9, and with a flick of a switch, you are now automatically happy, and cured because you made it.

I was doing Weight Watchers for years and could never get past the 10% milestone, it seemed, I would reach it, then boom go the other way because I felt like I had "done it" without realistically looking at exactly where I was at, I still sat morbidly obese !!!!

I adored my weight watchers leader ( I had been with her on and off for 8 years) but when I decided to leave for 12wbt, I gave her a bunch of flowers to say thank you for believing in me but I promised that I would come back and see her at Christmas time, I wasn't giving up, I was just changing directions.

So at Christmas I walked into the complex after the meeting had finished and she couldn't put it all together, could see it was me but I was 27 kilos lighter, something she had never seen.

Once we got talking she could not only see but hear that everything had changed about me. Not the body but the mindset and attitude that comes with it !!!!!

Over the years she watched, all my boys go through surgery, Taj looked like he had to have a full chest reconstruction and for 18 months Michael struggled with a massive goitre that gave him a limited airway passage to breathe, and in that he had a cancerous node,  ( the thyroid surgery completely removed the cancer, but it was hard knowing that he had that embedded in him too)  , Michael's dad got prostrate cancer and won that battle, and we had Simone's first suicide attempt. She said, " Anthea, you always had something major happening and it always stopped you, I felt so sorry for you and I just wished all these things would stop happening to you", but look at you now? I could hear her sympathise with me.  I hear Michelle Bridges saying, spin so much bullshit and excuses everyone around you believed them too, even yourself  ............   WOW and that's exactly what I had been doing before 12wbt. The evidence was clear, this is how I had been living.

I said, "Lynn, that's the point & the difference with me today .......  This is LIFE !!!!  There will always going to be SOMETHING no matter how big or how small, it's how I want to attack that and make that my reason to keep me heading in the right direction.

I started 12wbt because I needed a great distraction from Jenny dying and Simone's erratic life. I didn't go in with a goal, I just wanted to stop putting on the weight and I just didn't want to be sad because of my weight anymore and I just wanted to be under 100 kilos, because isn't than when happiness kicks in and all my problem's fade away?

I reported my progress to my 3 friends through texts every week and I reported to my Facebook world every 4 weeks. Still looking for people's approval, still trying to stay relevant, but I actually like it  ......  showing off and receiving so much encouragement and support, so I should be I'm working bloody hard at it!!!

As I went through my first round, I was hearing Michelle Bridges saying, you need to set goals and mini-goals. I was doing this but I had the only measurement to me that made complete sense, was my happiness.

I felt very pressured if I didn't say, well I want to be X amount of weight by a certain date and I will not stop until I hit my healthy BMI. (don't get me wrong these are soooo important to a healthy body and great goals they just weren't mine) . I was beginning to feel putting the number goal was like setting up that 10% weight loss goal from weight watchers that I could never achieve. What if my goal was to just find a complete balance of happiness and a healthy functioning body regardless of the number? Am I failure because I'm not saying I've made it when I've hit a number?  

At the beginning of this round, as well as my Dexa Scan I felt like I was in a great space, I had a mixed previous round with school holidays but once the kids were back at school full time I could push the pedal to the metal and rip through it again. I can't tell you how much I loved my new routine, mixing it up and heaps of gym work, because my body felt so strong and amazing, but then my knee reared it's ugly head. I figured because I had lost all this weight, my knee was no longer an issue.

My knees have been deteriorating since I was 21, having played so much squash. I was playing state squash in Melbourne 5 times a week and after matches couldn't change the gears in my car, the physio said that day, you've played your last game of squash, because you won't be walking in 20 years ....... I wished I had kept his number because he had an amazing crystal ball.

STATE SQUAD at age of 14

I'm just pushing this body to limits I've NEVER been too. I would pull up tender every second week, I would need to rest it for a few days, then once it felt good, bang back into it. I was doing 500 -700 calories burn a day  & my full SSS and felt FINALLY I was back in the pocket where I feel complete bliss. I go back onto the bmx track this time not walking it but running it, up and down those hills, with an extreme heart rate and a quick burn and I did 1000 calories at 1000 steps which felt magnificent I spent 3 and a half hours running the outside tracks, I did the stairs once, but the track up and down 4 times. If I could bottle up that feeling up I would. I felt sooo incredible. It felt like this peaceful magical place that I had been missing out on, it was a complete high like a drug, I left alive for the very first time.  My weight didn't budge but I just don't care anymore ...... well not care, I don't obsess and worry about it.

It seemed every 4 weeks would be the off week, and the fitness test impossible with running, squatting and stretching the knee is just so bad but I listened to this body ( funnily enough I just don't care to tell anyone yet, not Facebook and not my friends) 

I  rested enough to get myself right to do Run For The Kids. I initially wanted to do the 15km course and with the amount of walking I had been doing, it looked like I was going to do well with it, but with the consistent pain I was in, I thought lets do the 5.5km instead. So I changed the length, and my husband was thrilled, it was such an amazing day,

Before & after the race with Michael and meeting up with one of my gorgeous best friends Lisa.

I ran 80% of it,  not fast, but I ran and I felt like I had ticked off my  "goal" box. Doing this 12 months ago with 38 kilos on would have never even been a consideration but here I was, just doing it and feeling free.

My "official" time is 45.46 for the 5.5kms, it's a PB because it's a first for me.   

With Easter coming up, I have never been so excited the first Easter that I can say, lets go hiking, lets go for a drive, lets live life, lets be a fun family because I don't feel limited by my weight but on Thursday night I did one too many quick turns on my left knee and I just haven't recovered. It's made me think, of  Michelle Bridges, is this all my excuses coming into play because I feel I've been carrying this knee for ALONG time now ?   And I have worried that because I can't do all this physical work that I am use to doing, am I all of a sudden going to pile it all on again?

Then I've had a really good think about it. I think "excuses" is telling yourself and giving yourself permission to go and eat 4000 calories and saying, it's okay and acceptable to continue your own self destructive behaviour and blaming everything and everybody else but yourself.

This is a genuine reason, I just wished I had recognised it earlier than trying to push through it with explaining to myself that I could make it better.

So this Easter my knee kept collapsing with every step I made, literally , I could not put my pants on, shoes on, just sooooooo much pain, so I iced, elevated and rested for 4 days until I could get to my regular doctor. Who sent me for my X-Rays.

(It was when I took this photo I could see the difference and the top of the leg is doubled, I thought, hmmmmm, O-kay I not only see it, but I really feel the pain now)

X-Rays have revealed that the arthritis has rapidly increased in the joints and my right knee, the good knee has tripled the amount of arthritis in 2 years.

My bone has thinned behind my left knee cap and I have lost all the tracking behind the knee cap so it has no support. The X-Ray only gives the indication of bone damage and structure, not the ligaments and tendons, so I am beginning physio to strengthen the muscles and I see the surgeon on the 7th Of May, who I suspect will send me for a MRI, but he will tell me exactly whats going on.

Until then I need to suck the pain up with osteo panadol and very limited exercise on my legs. My doctor looked me in the eye and smiled at me, to make sure I was hearing her ..... NO MORE IMPACT HIGH INTENSITY EXERCISE !!!!  Slow movement in the water but nothing else but make sure it's 6 panadol a day and make that appointment with the surgeon ...... please.

So I took the film to my neighbour who is a radiologist, who pointed out all the shading and it's not good. But I guess it is what it is. I have my ears opened, I have heard. I don't like it. This has nothing to do with weight loss anymore of course that is still so important,  but this is about protecting my body so I am walking !!!!

Michael has been AMAZING !!!!!   During Easter he did an overhaul of the kitchen and removed all the crap that has crept in and he made me rest and ice. All through Easter he looked at me in bed and reminded me, your body is not burning calories like it's use to, so you need to be careful about what you eat now.  Today he looked at me and said, enough, you are clearly miserable go to the gym, NO equipment other than arm weights.

So I did, I hobbled and the pain is just constantly there but it's the oddest feeling.  I am use to spending 3 hours at the gym burning my calories and not coming out until I do. I missed my squats, I missed my 45 minutes on the cross trainer, I felt a bit better  knowing I had at least done something but I also feel sad because I know I miss the sweat and the rush. But it's a whole different type of sad, it's not poor me, it's an acceptance of the path has deviated.

There is no doubt I have swapped one addiction with another, I am no longer addicted to food, I am addicted to exercising and pushing as hard as I could.

So for now I have to hear and remember those doctors orders.

I also can't help but think about Jenny. She was in so much pain, did she complain? No, she was gracious, I have no idea how because I am hurting. I think of that conversation about my big fat morbidly obsess body and thinking, I need to get healthy because if I get cancer, how can I ever know when I am moving in a body that is hurting everyday because of all this extra weight I am carrying ?

This may have been the natural course of my body, bones and the arthritis but imagine how I would have coped if I was over 120 kilos and a shitty negative self image and self destructive behaviour with no consequences attitude because that's exactly how I was living before 12wbt.

Thank god, I kept going to get those kilos off when my body wasn't injured. Just like I explained to my weight watchers leader Lynne, there's always going to be something that's going on in our lives, I am just really happy that I kept forging through those first 2 rounds to loose the weight I did, that I have that supportive husband who understand how important it is to have good nutrition and also understand how important exercise is to my mental state too.

Yes am hurting, I am in extreme pain, and sometimes I  feel miserable, I am missing exercising like I have been accustomed too, but I've done this before, but on a whole different level. My life was take away and junk food and zero planning and no realistic goals and I had too adjust a new lifestyle  (THAT I LOVE)   and I just can't ever do THAT again !!!! It's a whole different sort of pain when I was 120 kilo !!!!

What if I never had that conversation with Nina on the side of the pool deck about 12wbt?

What if I never realised that the weight could mask something bigger like cancer, like Jenny's lung cancer started as "a sore back"  therefore I needed to work bloody hard to get me into a healthy functioning body?

I shudder to think where I would be, I would still be in denial and unhappy but most of all I would not have the tools and the mindset that tells me I am going to be o-kay because it's all up to me, to make it happen, which is all 12 wbt.

I think one of the greatest things about 12wbt is the SSS. When I did that 1000 calorie burn for the first time and it took me over 3 hours, it gave me a whole new perspective on the worth of the calorie.

There is no doubt that 12wbt has made who I am today but I have had the most amazing support with fitness friends, with the D30 group, with my own support network and more importantly within my 4 wall with my husband also becoming aware of how important this new life is.  So next round when I am not doing 12wbt, ( because I will have had surgery) I know I have taken everything from 12wbt and it's changed me completely !!!!

 I have never been happier, and it's not because I'm under 100 kilos . It's actually the way I feel about myself  and the way I treat people around me and that's all because I am happier with who I am in my own skin, which no doubt has been affected by the weight loss not THE AMOUNT I have lost .

I don't worry and dwell about the small unimportant stuff anymore, and my phone bill is cut in half because I'm not on it complaining all the time. I don't look at Facebook to feel validated & important anymore.

I will still continue my gym and assessments and reviews every 4 weeks, I am still concentrating on my Dexa Scan. I just won't be doing it under the 12wbt official.

But I've reached my measurement,  that is important to me, I've found my happiness.

Weight wise I still see my goal weight measurable to my Dexa Scan at 69-72 kilos and I will get there, I'm just not racing in the "weeks" to get there and my knee ( and my doctor)  has told me so too, I am taking a detour first to get these knee's stronger, again, can't say I like it but what else can I do?  Go eat cake and pizza?     

HARDLY !!!!!!!!!!  


DON'T GIVE UP BECAUSE YOUR EXCUSE IS IT'S TOO HARD OR YOU CAN'T BE BOTHERED .

Make that body stronger and healthy so when that big "something" comes, you have the right tools and mindset to get through it in a positive way.