The Vulnerable Truth

Happy Thursday my loves.
Today I'm going to get real with y'all...
Last time I was this real was when I did The Ugly Truth post.

This post has been sitting on blogger as a 'draft' for quite some time because I didn't want to post it. Heck, a huge part of me still doesn't want to post it - but it's time to be honest with myself (and apparently the whole interwebz, no big deal). I'm going to warn you now, this is going to be long.
Okay, so here we go.

I'm fat.

Okay, so that wasn't as hard to say as I had expected - phew.

Here's the thing, I have been overweight my ENTIRE life. I was raised in a house where food was cooked with 'love' (butter, fatty oils, etc). Lots and lots of love. My parents changed the foods we ate when I was 16 and we started eating much healthier versions of the fatty foods we has previously consumed on a daily basis. Goodbye white bread, hello whole wheat bread. Goodbye ground beef, hello extra lean ground beef (or chicken, or turkey).

I had never really considered dieting until I was 19-20, which is when I told myself I'd 'start on Monday' every friggin' week. Seriously, I would tell myself every week that it would be my last week of eating fast food, or sitting on my ass butt at home, being lazy. 'Next week is the start of a whole new me' I'd tell myself, ALL of the time. I tried not to vocalize this to anyone because it made it easier when Monday rolled around and I decided I wanted to eat fast food for lunch. Now as much as I'd love to push the blame off on anyone else for why I became so fat, I really have NOBODY to blame but myself. I know this. Don't worry mom, I'm not blaming you!

I came from a family where everyone was big, so I felt okay with who I was. I was raised in a house with so much love. The amount of love, affection, and protection that my Mom & Dad have for my brother and I is like nothing I've ever seen. I was taught (from a young age) to love myself, so I did. So what if I was 25, 50, or even 100 lbs heavier than my classmates or my friends? If it didn't matter to my friends or family, it didn't matter to me - and that was that. Yes, I got bullied. I've been called every name that you can possibly imagine and I quickly adapted to the mentality of 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me'. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it didn't hurt, because it did. I'm also not going to sit here and tell you that I even attempted to do anything about it, because I didn't. By the time I realized that I really should lose weight, I had TWO DECADES of bad habits under my belt.


This was me, through and through. I wanted it... but not badly enough to DO anything about it.

Instead of taking care of myself and changing my lifestyle when I was 20 years old (like I obviously should have done), I started eating more. I guess you could say I was an emotional eater. I would typically eat when I was bored - not when I was sad, angry, etc. Boredom is what caused me to eat. How absolutely ridiculous is that? Who eats out of BOREDOM?! The worst part is that I didn't even care what I was consuming. I would eat anything and everything, it really didn't matter to me. Instead of my weight going down, it just kept going up, and up, and up until I officially hit my heaviest weight at the age of 21. I can't believe I'm about to post this publicly, but this was me on my 21st birthday. Woof.



When I think about where I was at this point in my life - I was just sad. On the outside I was happy, and I've always been the 'funny girl', but inside - a large part of me felt numb. So numb, and so bored... so I ate. I ate, and ate, and ate. I didn't even like food - I actually hated food, but that didn't stop me from eating it. I'm pretty sure it made me eat even more. When I think about it, it makes me sad that I couldn't see what I was doing to myself - but as they say:
Ignorance is BLISS.

Just after my 22nd birthday, my best friend (Amanda) and I decided that we wanted to flip our worlds upside down and move across the country. We literally changed EVERYTHING that we knew about our lives, packed up and moved 6,000km away to the other side of the world country. Everything that was familiar to me was gone in an instant. When I got to Vancouver I didn't have a car (or anyone to drive me anywhere), or a job. This meant I needed to walk or take the bus anywhere I wanted to go. This was new to me - when I lived at home I drove everywhere. I worked a 20 minute walk from my house for FIVE YEARS but drove to work every day. The comfort of a car (or having someone drive me anywhere) was gone.

I was no longer living with my parents, which meant that I was now cooking every meal for myself - every day. Instead of my mom doing the grocery shopping and constantly having a supply of my favorite foods on hand whenever I wanted, I actually needed to go shopping and buy this stuff for myself. The catch was that I had to go grocery shopping with Amanda, my best friend - the health nut. Obviously I couldn't exactly buy a bag of chips, frozen food, or cookies in front of her - so I bought healthy food. After a few months of buying healthy food to show her that I'm not always such a fat ass, these habits actually started to stick. I started loving a lot of these healthier foods, and found myself no longer drawn to the unhealthy crap that I had become so accustomed to eating. Also, since moving to Vancouver - I discovered that I'm lactose intolerant. There was a 3 month period of time where I was literally sick to my stomach every day and thought it was 'normal'. Nope, not normal. It just so 'happened' that I had lactose intolerance...

So, this new lifestyle (actually walking places and eating healthier food) helped me lose a good chunk of weight in the past two years, since moving here! I don't know what my weight was when I moved here, and I don't know what my weight is now, but I feel better and I look better. Here is a side by side comparison of where I was, and where I am now:



I'm happy to say that I've managed to drop between 3-4 pant sizes since moving to Vancouver, and that's only from changing my lifestyle. I can assure you that I definitely have not been 'trying' to lose weight. I was just a wisher, dreamer, and insanely hopeful that the weight would 'fall off'.
Don't worry guys - I'm no longer in denial.


This is where I am today, friends.
I'm not longer wishing or dreaming to be healthy. I'm doing it.

Obviously, I'm still a big girl. I know that I have a lot of work ahead of me, but that's what this post is all about.
I need to make this public. So here we go:

Dear friends, family, WORLD;
I promise that the girl on the left (comparison photo) will NEVER be back, and the girl on the right will soon be gone. I promise to work towards the goals that I'm setting for myself, and I'm prepared to work for every pound that I need to lose. I don't want to be 'skinny', I just want to be healthy. I will fall off the tracks sometimes and have 'cheat days', but I promise that 'cheat days' won't turn into 'cheat weeks' or 'cheat months'. I promise that the blood, sweat, and tears will be worth it, and I promise that I won't let any of you down.
All my love,
Faith