#3 - The Wake Up Moment

Someone asked me to share my wake up moment and I am not really sure if there was one amazingly clear perfect moment that screamed "hey fat ass, wake up!" I mean, there were so many things that can lead up to the point where you just can't take it anymore. I remember standing at a bus stop after work. I was minding my own business and this guy walks by. He stopped right in front of me and very loudly exclaims "your so fat I don't know what to think." I was so embarrassed and immediately angry. Who the hell was he to say such a thing to me and so loudly the whole world could hear? Of course the thought never crossed my mind that my "excess FAT" was there for all the world to see! I mean, I am standing there in my size 54 pants and 7XXL shirts. Yes I was that big! I had to do all my clothes shopping via catalog. Gotta love that one!

Then there was that moment in the ER where the doctor came back and asked me if I was diabetic. I emphatically said "No". Why would they even ask me that kind of question? The doctor looked at me and said that I was spilling sugar into my urine. Apparently this is not a good sign. They took my blood sugar and it was 350. Wow. I remember going home afterwords and crying, I had weight onset Type 2 Diabetes. I went to the store and bought a cake and a gallon of ice cream, came home and ate it. I guess that was not my wake up either.

I finally got insurance through work so I was able to go to the doctor on a regular basis. They started with Labs to test my A1C (this test shows you what your blood sugars have been for the previous 3 months). When the labs came back I got more great news! High cholesterol, high blood pressure, high everything. My CT scan results from the prior ER visit came back too. Fatty Liver and Kidney Stones. Yay me! I was on a roll! Wake up moment? NO.

I was laying on the couch watching TV and my phone rang. This was in the summer of 2007, about 4 months after all of the health issues coming into light. I tried to get up and couldn't. I literally could not get up from a lying down position. I was way too big and had no upper body strength. I had to roll myself off the edge of the couch, let myself painfully hit the floor and then use the coffee table and the couch to pull myself up. Again, no upper body strength, so this was quite a process. Also, it hurt! Another moment, but not the one!

My blood sugars started hitting into the 600's. I was forgetting things and my work life was suffering. The only thing that I could focus on was eating. Which was making things worse. Although I did not care too much. I did not want to think about having all of these medical issues.
Friends and family were becoming more and more concerned. They would tell me that I needed to lose weight for my health and that I was not looking good. Hello people! I was 400 pounds, I know I did not look good! Contrary to popular belief, most fat people know they are FAT! We usually are the hardest on ourselves for it and nothing you say will penetrate into our brains enough to make a change! I had to get to a point on my own!

I almost got fired from my job because I was not taking care of myself. Did this wake me up? Not really. I mean, I did not want to lose my job, but life was not very pretty for me. I was in a major depression and could not get out of it. Looking back I can tell you now that I truly hated myself. I was killing myself bite by bite, hiding away the real me behind layers of fat. I could not and would not love myself enough to change.

In early October of 2007, I lost my apartment to mold. I lost all of my personal belongings along with the apartment. Mold had gotten into everything and I had not even known. I had no money saved up and had nowhere to go. Thankfully, my parents let me come and live with them for a bit so I could save up for a new apartment. It was kind of weird. All of a sudden I was living out in the boonies with my mom and dad and eating normal food with them. I had no money to eat out, so I had to eat like them.

My mom was overweight almost her whole life and she was in the process of losing herself. When I moved in she had about 40 pounds to go to reach her goal. She was looking really good and I was so proud of her. She was in a group called TOPS, which is a support group for "taking off pounds sensibly". She kept pushing me to join and I kept saying maybe later. In early November of 2007 I weighed myself and I was down 25 pounds! I was in shock! I was losing weight from eating real food. Who knew?!

It was that moment on the scale. That one shocking, exciting, Oh My God moment that I saw the tiniest bit of light at the end of the tunnel. One thought crossed my mind over and over. "MAYBE I COULD DO THIS!"

Go figure! I had all of these moments that you would think would have made the light bulb above my head turn on. It never did. My wake up moment was my first positive experience on this very long journey ahead of me.

To be continued.....