~The Identity Crisis : Seeking a Better, Bigger Life in a Smaller, Healthier Body~

I truly started my journey to an improved health status, self-love and weight loss (my Utopia) when I allowed myself to face the truth about the past, and see how it had impacted the size of my life, the size of my body, the health crisis impacts on my body and mind, and how I thought and felt about myself. Yes, we cannot change the past, but we can learn from it and change how the past is affecting our present life, by facing it!  I am not recommending that anyone get stuck living a re-enactment of their own past , sad story, but I do believe when we face the past we move beyond it, and we change how we live life in the present. 

(Thanks to Cigna for some of these words which I have edited to suit my purposes)

 

 

I have always been fat!  From 72kgs in my late teens, to around 116kgs when I was 38 and sometimes bigger or smaller during those in-between years. Through it all though I remained true to myself and my abilities and capabilities, never allowing it once to affect my outlook in life in general but cautiously optimistic that I had the power to change my life around, for ME.  So naturally during this current journey (and the many I travelled in the past), I have questioned and am still questioning who am  I really?  Does the size of my body define me, or is it what society, my family, my friends, acquaintances, strangers, see in me or is it my insecurities speaking to me ?  Is it the opinions of others that define me?  Is my present boldness compensation for my past meekness, which was caused by the shackles that bound through out my fat and unhealthy existence?  I have yet to find the answers....

 

I reflect often, it gives me the opportunity to have a good chat and look at myself through MY eyes, journalise, chronicle, physically write with pen on paper, my memoirs, reflections, thoughts on a whole range of subject matter, my journey included.  This past weeks' reflection was a bit of a troubled one, that left me physically exhausted and sleepless for a night or two.  When I read through my writings, I realized just how tortured I was feeling at that point in my journey and life.  Besides having to process the criticisms, opinions and telling-me-what-to-do- with my life and my journey, I had issues on the home front to think about.  A child with Attention Deficit Disorder, another child on the brink of his first big exam, a husband who really is the salt of the earth in all his support and unconditional love for me and our children, an ailing mom who continually inspires and motivates me but is still ailing, a sister who is tortured in her own life, losing a husband and son in a short space of time and who's only child is studying thousands of kilometres away in a foreign land with so many challenges...the list was endless but I kept coming back to ME.  I would tackle the others in a later reflection....

 

This week marked a big milestone in my journey to health and weight loss Utopia.  I passed the 25kg fat loss since embarking on this journey since July 18, 2013. While the accolades, critiques, concerns and again telling-me-what-to-do about the niggly bits have consumed me, I realize how truly alone I really felt.  I looked in the mirror and saw the same old fat person staring back at me...

 

No amount of mom, husband, children, sibling, friends and acquaintance love could have made a difference at that point in time.  That's where the identity crisis loomed and probably still does a bit. The only time I felt assured was when a group of really good women, strong women in particular, from an online health and weight loss social network made me realize that it's the process that I  have to go through in my journey to a new me...I whipped out old photo's and made a comparison to the new, emerging me and only then did I see the difference.  All the affirmations through compulsive clothes shopping, trying out new healthy food options in the stores, to continually measuring my progress now started to make sense. 

 

So I am very much in-between identities currently, searching for my new one through my improved health and looks but also steadfastly hanging onto the old one....there's so much good in that identity...and as I move along to the next leg of my journey, I can only hope that it leads me to all things good about myself...afterall, I am the only one that I have....

 

" Not everything that is faced can be changed, But, nothing can be changed until it is faced"

Lucille Ball

Aluta Continua.....