FAT!!!!

Before my journey and during my journey.

I'm at work on Friday and it has been one hell of a week and this is my three day weekend thank God.  It's around 3:00pm which means only 3 more hours and I'm out of there to enjoy the weekend, on the home stretch if you will.  I'm standing at my desk and a customer walks up to check in, for those of you who don't know I am an assistant service manager and write service.  As I'm getting his information he's going through his wallet and says I think I have something for you so I continue typing in what I need to type in and tell him oh ok.  He pulls out a card and hands it to me saying I've lost 40lbs taking this I think this can help you loose the same, take it.  I stand there with this card in my hand with a million things going through my head and somehow manage to maintain my composure and say as polite as I can, uh ok I lost 100lbs running and eating better and placed that God forsaken card on my desk.  His response then was oh I can't run, I have bad knees.  Now mind you, this was no buff muscle man, lean mean fighting machine standing at my desk.  This was a 6'4"ish rather large man standing before me and I could have taken the wrong turn and said to him you might need to take some more of that pill BUT I DIDN'T, although the thought did cross my mind.  I let him know we were done and I could come get him when his car was ready and then I ate some ice cream!  

it really got me to thinking and thinking and i was stewing at first and stunned.  i walked around looking at everyone i knew saying i'm pretty sure i just got called fat and told i needed to loose weight.  i think they were all just as stunned and surprised someone had the balls to tell someone that they just met they needed to loose weight.  and did he come right out and say your a fatty and heres the way to the mother land of skinny people,  No, but handing me that card and saying what he did might as well have been the latter statement.  the photo above with my Nana was me just shy of 260lbs and as you can see there was no way she could wrap her arms around me.  my children couldn't wrap their arms around me but not ONE time did ANYONE ever walk up to me and tell me i needed to loose weight in any sort of way but i was treated so much different.  the ones that i love and love me and knew me never saw me that way because they only saw the true me.  the ones who didn't know me and just looked at me from the outside saw a lazy fat person who must just sit around and eat all day which was far from the truth.  i did eat and no i didn't eat well but lazy is not a word that anyone could have ever pinned on me.  people weren't as quick to hold a door for me when going in or out.  it was like i was invisible but yet not because they were all standing there judging me.  I've always had a personality to go and speak to anyone anywhere yet when i was heavier i was shunned and looked at like why are you talking to me as they would just nod and walk away.  the funny part was i never really saw myself as big as i see me in these photos today.  

so why do we treat people who are bigger than us like they aren't human?  why do we automatically assume they aren't as intelligent as thinner people?  is it because you think why would they do that to themselves and to be sure they know how bad that is for their body?  

i personally can speak from both sides of this fence.  i am no different now than i was then except a litter more wiser and more experienced.  i also know i made EVERY and i mean EVERY excuse in the book as to why i couldn't loose the weight.  i was comfortable being uncomfortable in my padded body.  I don't have a thyroid, my knees are too bad, i don't have the time, you name it i've said it but it was my defense mechanism.  i knew if i had some sort of good reason for not getting off my ass then people would also get comfortable with accepting my padded body.  i only have one friend who would from time to time try to get me to do something and he would always say for my health.  he finally just kind of gave up and accepted who i was.  NO ONE CAN MAKE ANYONE LOOSE THE WEIGHT.  no matter what you say to a person it's not going to make them do anything.  it's not about the food, the food is just the comfort, its what was turned to when it seemed nothing else was there to turn to.  looking back i would say it was my addiction.  i turned to the comfort of that to hide from what was really going on in my life and I guess that's why i don't look at bigger people and think wow what a lazy person, i actually look at them and think wow what battles are they fighting that we don't know about and HOW CAN I HELP THEM REALIZE IT ISN'T HELPING.  just typing these words brings tears to my eyes and makes me hope that if you take nothing from today's blog at all you take away this,

BE KIND FOR EVERYONE YOU MEET IS FIGHTING A BATTLE YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT

Now to leave you on a much more positive note, not just i lost 100lbs because my journey wasn't about the side bar of just looking better it was about my health.  Before I started this journey my resting heart rate was 89, today my resting heart rate is that of a 30 year old female elite athlete at 54.  

I SAVED MY OWN LIFE A COUPLE OF TIMES OVER.

peace, love and happiness, Dawn