Then on my 43rd birthday after an allnight flight from Edinburgh to Washinton DC, I ended up in the hospital. Thankfully I was just there as a visitor, but my mother was flat on her back with a massive stroke. She couldn't sit up, couldn't talk, couldn't walk and couldn't even feed herself.
Shocked into reality, I made the horrible discovery that my fat does affect the people around me. Not just in the long run, but in the present as well.
While I sat at her bedside for the next two month, chasing nurses around and learning how to take care of my mother, I let my mind drift back over the last couple of decades.
Before I got super fat I had led a very active life, though it was a lazy-active life. I would get out and about but would always want to take the car to drive around some exotic place I was visiting, or instead of climbing up in the towers of a castle we were exploring, I'd send my husband with the camera and look at digital pictures of the view from the top, never having made it there myself.
There was the living that was just not full. Not the way my stomach would be full anyway.
For years while living in Scotland I wouldn't go to the movies with my husband. I would lie and say I wanted to wait for it to come to DVD, but the truth be told, my arse wouldn't fit in the seats anymore. On the rare occassions I couldn't get out of a trip to the movies with friends or family, I would always complain that my back was killing me, spend the next two hours with just the back four inches of my butt in the seat while I leaned forward bracing myself with fat folded arms over the back of the chair in front of me. By the time the film ended both of my legs would be tingling and dead from this position.
So there in the hospital, slapped in the face by the horrible truth, I finally broke down and saw the light. If I don't take care of me, one of two things will happen. I'll die before my time or worse yet, I'll hang on for years and my grown children and husband will be forced to care for me, all because I couldn't control my eating and hated exercise. How utterly selfish is that?
Being fat has nothing to do with how I look. It is something that I have done to myself, so some deep secret part of my must be alright with it. But it isn't just my problem.
If you look at what obesity is costing the health care system with everything from diabetes (every 21 seconds someone else is diagnosed) strokes, heart problems and cancer, you don't have to look far to see that if you want to kill yourself slowly with chocolate, you can!
The solution: It is tough to stick to a healthy lifestyle and make great food choices when you have lived a long time eating anything you want, as much as you want and just sitting on a couch. For me personally with nearly 300 pounds to lose, I'm finding the last 100 to be a real nightmare.
We all need that thing to keep us motivated. The hard part is, that thing is different for each of us. That is why diets and fad programs don't work. We are all different. Different things drive us to abuse food and not take care of our own bodies. I call them a comfortable set of lies we like to tell ourselves that feel as good as that pair of hideous stretch pants that don't care how fat you get, they still fit you.
So what is the secret? Keep trying and never give up. Even after a bad day, a bad night, a bad week or even a bad year, get right back on that healthy horse and try again.
Staying motivated is something that we all need daily doses of, just like food. We just can't spend 5 minutes getting motivated and stay full forever, we need to get it on a regular basis.
Motivation happens for me now whenever I try to pass motivation on. Just writing this blog and thinking that there might be one person out there that the lightbulb clicks on over your head and you think...I can do this! --- it is what really motivates me. To get motivation, give it.
Sitting in the hospital with my father who passed away at 82 a few months later. I was not able to sit back in the chair (notice the arms) was 440 pounds and terrified, not just for my mother.
