Hello fellow steemit users... steemers? steemitites? idk
My name is Michael. I think it's safe to say that I have been fat nearly all my life. I think I was something around 130 or 140 when I was in middle school. That was 10 years ago. I'm now 23 years old and I am nearing 200. However, I didn't exactly have the typical middle school experience.
As I said, I've been the fat kid nearly all my life. The only way I knew how to deal with the frustration was through cussing and making dirty jokes so people didn't think of me as the fat kid, they only thought of me as this funny kid who cusses. This began around the time I transferred to a different elementary school in the third grade because of some gifted program my parents really wanted me to go to.
At the time, I hadn't really formed a kind of self-identity. I didn't know if I would hang out with the nerds or the athletic guys or whoever. I went over to the basketball courts to play with the cool guys, but they ended up excluding me from the game and just asked me to be the "ref" while they were making all the calls anyway. I walked away from that and the only guys from my class I could hang out with were the nerds.
They played in the sand, dug holes and tunnels, burned ants with magnifying glasses. I had a lot of fun with them. But I wasn't really as active as I was at my previous school. Over the years, I was gaining weight and those guys I called my friends started to make me feel excluded the same way those guys at the basketball courts did. They even teased me, calling me a U-haul truck because I cursed like a sailor and I was fat.
Middle school came around and things didn't really change that much. I still didn't realize they were talking shit behind my back, but I still stuck around. Most people would say that I wasn't that fat, but these guys made me feel like I was like Hurley from Lost. Still, one of the heaviest guys in my class, it wasn't easy for me to make new friends, so I stuck with the old ones that made me feel like crap.
8th grade came around the corner and the one thing you wouldn't expect to happen to a 13 year old boy happened. Brain cancer. Stage 3 Medulloblastoma. I had a malignant growth located in the posterior fossa which is doctor talk for having a brain tumor attached to my cerebellum and brain stem. It also spread to my spine, but the tumors on my spine were benign. Non-cancerous. If they were cancerous, it would have been considered stage 4. With the chemo, radiation, steroids and all the side effects that came along with it, I gained a little weight, lost nearly 90% of my body fat, and then it all came back in the end.
Oh, and those supposed friends I had? They were nowhere to be found. In fact, one of them was messing around with my girlfriend while I was gone.
The fat all came back. Not the cancer. The cancer is all gone. I'm relatively fine. I still have a lot of fat around the edges, but I'd be much better off if I would exercise more often. Now, I've tried sports like swimming, tennis, pilates and weight training to try to lose weight, but I never did eat very well anyway. So I would do all of these exercises and have pizza and beer with my friends and wonder why I wasn't losing any weight. I did try to do this Herbalife thing, but the longer I was in it, the more I realized it was just a pyramid scheme. Those nutrient containers have nothing really valuable in them while the shakes they sell you at the shops are full of a bunch of extra stuff that you have to pay more than double the price of the actual nutrients.
Anyway, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I'm depressed. I'm lonely. I'm tired all of the time. If I don't get myself together any time soon, I'm gonna end up dying when I'm 40 or 50 years old from diabetes or some heart condition. I don't just need to change my exercise habits, I need to change the way I eat, the way I sleep, everything. Fad diets don't work because they are what they are. Diets. Diets are meant to be temporary. I need to change my lifestyle. I need to become a better version of myself, not just work on one aspect of my life and expect everything else to follow.
This is where the real weight-loss journey begins.
It's 2018. It has been 10 years since I was diagnosed with cancer and I haven't done very much to make better my quality of life. Sure, I've taken jobs, tried to save up for a nice car or even a down payment on a house, but I kept failing because I never looked at the big picture. If I want to conquer life, I first need to conquer myself.
This year, I'm taking a Boot Camp class at my community college. It's only two days a week, but I'm going to take what I learn from it and apply it at home and at the gym. I've even taken out my old Wii balance board and Wii Fit Plus to try to get a workout regiment going. I'm also going to make sure I eat only the best foods for me. No more burgers, no more pizza and beer, and no more greasy chicken wing eating contests with my friends.
Starting this upcoming Monday, I'm going to post a photo of myself every week so I can see the physical progress. I need to change things up and I may need a lot of support. I hope maybe people can send healthy recipes I could try or maybe talk about their own weight loss journeys. I'm tired of failing. Especially at this.
