Wellness

My wellness journey is a long, complicated, ongoing process. There have been many ups and downs along the way. This page will be dedicated to my journey beginning in 2021, right after I replaced what shall be known as the Devil-Bed. After 6.5 years of regain – first due to a year of trauma, then due to 5.5 years of sleeping on a bed I’m allergic to – my body is starting over from scratch. I gained 90 lbs in that time, and if my body will allow (because I don’t know yet the extent of longterm damage from massive allergy-induced inflammation), I’m beginning a journey to lose them in 2021. Details available on my Wellness: Before page.

Because I’m starting from scratch, I’m going to begin with the basics that have helped my body in the past:

• lots of exercise! I lose primarily through exercise and prefer this to extreme calorie-cutting. I enjoy a lot of types of exercise, including yoga, hiking, walking, running, dancing, boxing, and circuit training
• a healthy-but-reasonable diet with a wide variety of produce and as much whole, real foods as possible
• continued work on my mental health to keep a positive relationship with food and my body (and body-image)

However – and this is important to me – this is not just a weight loss journey. Instead, I want to be truly healthy – in mind and heart as well as in body. I want to celebrate my body no matter its size. I want to embrace life, and embrace myself, and love me for who I am.

My old vision board from 2015 was very outdated, so I created this new one in 2021 to reflect the changes I’ve made in body, mind, and spirit over the last six years. My wellness goal remains the same: to strive for health, fitness, connection, kindness, strength, and confidence. Only the vision of that goal has changed.

Current Weight Progress
0 of 90 lbs lost – 0% (as of 2/1/21)

Resources and Inspiration:
• Alee and The Wellness Room, who taught me how amazing therapy can be
• Brittany Gibbons, aka Brittany Herself: her TED talk, her book Fat Girl Walking, and her general body positivity
• Molly Galbraith, especially her 28-Day Love Your Body Challenge
• Find What Feels Good – Yoga With Adriene focuses on building a positive relationship with your body
• Birthmarkings: the post-birth-body self-image documentary that started my journey toward body-positivity (particularly the mother who comes in at 16:48, whose belly looks a lot like my post-pregnancy belly looked before surgery in January 2014)
• Julia Kozerski‘s truthful photo-journey about the post-weight-loss body reality (note: photo journal at the first link includes male and female nudity)
• Katya Zharkova (a Belarusian plus-size model and actress) and her campaign to show straight-size and plus-size modeling for what they are. Examples available (with pictures, and nudity warning) at The Daily Mail and Styleite.
• Jessamyn Stanley and Amber Karnes for showing that yoga can be for every body and every size.
• Sarah Ramey‘s book on Mysterious Illnesses, which led me to the discovery of my poisonous Devil-Bed
• This article on the pitfalls of low/low-ish carb diets.
• Particularly helpful and/or inspiring books: Come As You Are, It Was Me All Along, Elena Vanishing, The Body Keeps the Score, The Case Against Sugar, Great Courses: Stress and Your Body
• All my loving friends and family, for believing in me, for cheering me on, for never judging me on my size or failures, for insisting that I’m worth it whenever I falter and forget. Thank you.
• More to come – and suggestions welcomed!

Particularly Significant Posts:
**Note: Many of these posts came prior to my discovery of the Devil-Bed on 12/26/20. They were a journey to try to find the source of my illness, and often went off on side quests that led no where. Still, I feel it’s important to represent them here.

– My Weight Journey: Timeline
– The Great Bra Hunt
– On Starting A Brand New Journey (8/24/15)
– On Deferred Grief (9/30/15)
– On PTSD (10/21/15)
– On Abdominal Surgery (1/13/16)
– On Therapeutic Yoga (3/30/16)
– On Choosing Exercise You Love (2/8/17)
– On the Subjectivity of Longterm Loss (10/11/17)
– On Body Positivity (11/29/17)
– On the Problem With Calories (12/6/17)
– On Depression and Weight (12/13/17)
– On Returning to Basics (3/21/18)
– On Focusing on the Journey (6/21/18)
– On Doctors and Women (7/11/18)
– On Analyzing Patterns (12/12/18)
– On Letting Go (12/19/18)
– On Ending the War with my Body (2/27/19)
– On Eating More Carbs (4/3/19)
– On Hiding in Plain Sight (9/11/19)
– On Deciding Not to Hide Anymore (1/15/20)
– On Identifying Potential Roots (2/19/20)
– On Warm-Ups (7/15/20)
– On Coffee and Metabolic Syndrome (9/2/20)
– On the Limitations of Traditional Medicine (11/25/20)
– On the Devil-Bed (12/30/20)

Last updated: 2/3/21