What inspired you to finally lose the weight?

My body was failing me.

I’ll tell you a little story.

Approximately ten years ago, when I was seventeen years old, I was taking summer school P.E. so I wouldn’t have to do it during the school year. I was about 280 lbs at this time and a few weeks of physical education was a lot better in my mind than having to suffer throughout the school year. The thing was though, for some reason I did not feel good at all, and I couldn’t fully participate. My teachers just assumed I was being difficult, but literally the day after summer school had ended, I went to the emergency room. I was vomiting, I had so much pain. I couldn’t even drink water. I’m a tough girl. I’m pretty good with pain. I walked down to the car, I walked to see my doctor, I walked myself into the ER.

Turns out, I tried to do a summer of P.E. with a ruptured appendix. My surgeon isn’t sure how long my appendix had been ruptured, but that it was a while considering the amount of scar tissue I had. Basically what happened was my fat cells enclosed the poison from the appendix and kept me alive. It was funny then and it’s funny now, but essentially, my fat saved my life. I tend to see these things as signs. I took it as a sign that my body was okay with being fat. That the fat was on my side, not against me.

Fast forward to me being about 21/22, I had a severe back injury from work. I also developed sciatica, and my foot would go in and out of being numb. I checked all these things off as simply being because I was injured. These symptoms would go away. I was fine.

Then when I was about 24/25, I experienced the worst pain in my life. I guess it wasn’t the worst pain, but it was so uncomfortable with no way to be relieved. I found out I had gall stones. I was in and out of the ER and told to schedule a surgery. I put this off because I didn’t want to lose my gallbladder. I stalled, and prolonged it, and my mom got fed up with me. She made fried rice (my mom makes the damn best fried rice, okay, and she knew I wouldn’t be able to resist) and I had about three bowls of it that Saturday night.

I was up the rest of the night with an attack. I kept my dad up too. I was in and out of the ER about three times before they finally admitted me because the pain would not go away. This will probably sound stupid to some people, but it was football Sunday, and my dad is a huge football fan. I hate inconveniencing people and I was crying and apologizing to him profusely for him having to be there with me rather than watch his game. He, of course, thought I was being ridiculous. He was stressed, and getting angry with the nurses because he saw me, his daughter who didn’t cry over physical pain, bawling and doubling over because I could not be relieved. I could not get comfortable.

I had a realization. With that realization, I guess I should retract and reword my earlier statement.

My body wasn’t failing me. I was failing my body.

I want to say that’s all it took for me to get my life in order and for me to want to take control, but it wasn’t. There was no huge life changing moment for me that made me wake up and realize I needed to do something.

I was twenty-six years old and it was the beginning of summer 2017. I was sprawled on the couch because my back pain returned and my sciatica was acting up. I couldn’t feel my foot. As I laid there, I thought about what would happen if I never regained feeling in my foot. It had been numb for a while, and I had learned how to walk without the feeling. So if I moved a certain wrong way, I would stumble. My mind drifts pretty far when I self-reflect and it gets pretty dramatic. So naturally, I started thinking about what would happen if they ended up having to cut it off. I started thinking about loss of limbs, eventual death, and essentially scared myself.

If I didn’t make a change in my life, I was going to die.

I would never become an aunt to my sister’s future children. I would never get married and eventually have my own. I would never grow old and get to be a crazy and cynical grandma. If I continued with the life I was living, I wondered if I’d even make it to forty. I wondered if I would die in my thirties.

My parents would have to bury their youngest daughter because she didn’t care about herself enough to choose to live.

I realized that day that obesity is a slow form of suicide. We are essentially eating ourselves to death, and no one would think we’d done it on purpose. I couldn’t outright kill myself because I hated the thought of hurting my family and friends that way, but I was still killing myself. No one even knew. Not even me. It was subconscious. I was killing myself and my body was screaming for help.

At twenty-six years old, I had to decide if I wanted to live or if I was going to let myself die.

I chose life. I will continue to choose life until life stops choosing me.

P.S. I failed summer school P.E. On the upside, due to my unique circumstance, I got to do online P.E. Lmaooo. Don’t ask.

Thank you for the A2A.

Just for clarification: I have medical issues that caused me to gain weight from 11 years old onward. Regardless, my opinion remains the same. Obesity is a slow form of suicide. I have medical issues, but I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t exercise and I didn’t eat as good as I should have (or even close). Overweight and obesity are not the same thing. Thanks.

Edit: Because people care so much about my eyebrows… Lmao. My eyebrows are naturally very thick. VERY THICK. My mom hated that and always wanted them waxed very thinly. But that stopped (obviously lmao). I didn’t just… grow more thicker eyebrows or anything like that. They just aren’t waxed to that extreme anymore.