When I first started on this journey, I was in a place where I just didn’t have any motivation to do anything fitness related. I’ve hated anything that involved losing my breath, sweating, tiredness and pain. So that completely ruled out exercise of any kind. I was leading a pretty sedentary lifestyle since I left formal education, and even while I was still in school, I never really made the effort in PE lessons. I would find excuses not to participate, or do the bare minimum.
I felt I could get away with this because I was always relatively slim. Not skinny, not fat, but just slim and tall – I think my height allowed to me to carry weight well. But fast forward to me in my late twenties and early thirties, and things were a little more different. I was still carrying weight well, but I was definitely a lot heavier than I was at 21. Clothes were fitting differently, and I was self-conscious about the rolls developing on my back and around my tummy. I was wearing baggier clothes to cover it up and sucking in the belly, but there’s only so much that can do. The problem was I still was very resistant to the idea of doing exercise and food had become like a lover to me. I was totally besotted and infatuated with it (still am).
My diet wasn’t completely unhealthy – I still enjoyed vegetables and such, but I was also consuming a lot of sugar and carbs and I didn’t consider the damage I was doing until I went to the doctor one day for a blood test. I asked to have my blood looked at for something almost totally unrelated to what the results revealed. It turned out my blood sugar levels were high enough that I was considered borderline type 2 diabetic. What a wakeup call. Years of slowly creeping weight gain and eating everything in sight had almost caught up to me. I had to take action. I had to take a look at my attitude towards exercise, and my relationship with food. There was no way I was going to allow myself to become diabetic. Not to mention the other symptoms I was suffering with that I’d originally wanted the blood test for. I had to do something about them.
There was a lot of googling. And thinking. And worrying. And some trepidation. (I really wasn’t looking forward to having to exercise). But the even bigger worry was my eating. This love affair with food wasn’t to end, but to change.
iSubstance 