Not Taking it for Granted

I have been thinking and this thought has been in my head the past few days about not taking things for granted. 

Once upon a time, I used to weigh 80kg. That was the time where I was studying in England and I discovered the joy of aerobics, walking and realizing that I have control over my food. So I did aerobics 5 times a week, walked everywhere I went and ate normally.

What I realized about my body was that I was still BIG and needed to lose more when in actual fact I was already small. I didn't have any awareness at all about my body!

Being in Brunei, I put on weight because at that time the only way to spend time with people was to eat eat eat. I noticed I was putting on weight but didn't think too much about it. My awareness about my body was still low.

Then I decided to repeat this pattern of mine. I invested in a personal trainer, a gym membership and at the gym 5 times a week where on the weekends I would work out for 3 hours. This time the scale did not go down but I was getting smaller. It must have been all the muscle! I was eating really healthy or was I starving myself? All I remember is that if I had not eaten in a while, I would start to shake. I was more or less an ok size. And then... I fell down half a flight of stairs, hurt my foot really bad and it took so long to recover that I lost the momentum of going to the gym.

I'm not sure what was going through my mind but there was low awareness about the body and the food I was consuming. I got bigger. And I love to wear black! (In fact I still like to wear black but now I'm not so shy to wear more colours.)

Until *bang* I hit the 120kg mark, it hurt when I walked or stood too long, my blood pressure was on the border of going into the high range and each time I go to the doctor for any reason, they would give me some sort of look... The kind that says "If you know what's good for you, go lose weight!"

So after 3 years of fighting with myself, I finally took action by going on this adventure. And I am very grateful that I am now more aware of my body because now I recognize I am getting smaller and I am choosing not to repeat the patterns which I put myself through a couple of years ago. I am still critical of what I see in the mirror but I think that will disappear over time. I really don't want to take me for granted and to throw away all this hard work. I am 97.5 kg and I am proud of it so far!