3 years.

In the past three years I have gone through so many ups and downs. I've had several break downs and thought i was falling back into the place where I was before. In the past three years i've wanted to give up.. throw in the towel and just let it take over.
But i've also learned what it's like to wake up and love yourself. I've learned what it's like to go out to eat with friends and family and not have food control everything. In the past three years i've managed to become someone that isn't constantly thinking about the calories going into my body. In the past three years i've rebuilt my thought process when it comes to food and health.

When I first chose Recovery, nobody said that it was going to be easy. There were people that stayed.. and those people I can't thank enough for how much they've done for me and how much they've managed to help me through the times I wanted to give up. But I also lost a lot of people. There were so many people that left. They left without a reason and without a second thought.

I used to use the people that left as motivation. To prove them wrong. To prove that I could do it .. that i could be better. Three years later i look at the people that have stuck by me and believed in me every step of the way and I do it for them. I do it to prove them right. To prove to them that they didn't stay to watch me fall apart all over again.

Three years ago I hated myself so much that i couldn't stand to look at myself without breaking down into tears. 7 years ago, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought about everything that I could change. Today I look at myself and I smile. Today i look back at where I was and it's hard to believe that I've come so far. Today I think back to the times that people would ask me if i'd eaten that day. I look back on the things I used to do.. the things I used to say to get people off my back about eating.

In the past three years i've gone from slowly gaining weight back to not restricting anything. To the mind set that if i said no to anything I would end up back where i was before. It wasn't until this year that, that mindset was broken. It's been three years. In three years i've broken down, i've thought about giving up and letting it take control. But when I look back on it... I'm glad i didn't.. because if i would have given up and let it take over, who knows where I would be now.

There are still so many things that I struggle with, and some days are harder than others.. but the thing about mental illness is that it's a daily battle. You don't wake up one day and it's gone. Some days are harder than others. Some days you don't want to get out of bed. Some days getting up and getting dressed is all I can manage. Somedays I go to bed early and just sleep because I want it to end, I want it to go away. But that doesn't mean that I'm falling back into where i was before. One day isn't going to cancel out what i've accomplished up to this point.

Three years have gone by. It seems like so much time.. but in the long run it's really just a short period. This is going to be the rest of my life. Three years is just the beginning.

April 14 2015 -- Update / Wk 2 Phase 2

I just started my next phase with my trainer Anthony (www.mackfitnesssolutions.com) and I couldn't feel better about my workouts and how things are going. I was so skeptical on getting an online trainer on whether or not I would be actually able to follow the workouts and if they would work. But I can honestly say that it's been the best choice that i've made for myself in a long time.

It's almost been three years since I decided to choose my health and decided that I needed help. Throughout the past three years i've still struggled so much to find a balance between my physical and mental health. I've also struggled to find a healthy relationship with food after restricting certain things and keeping track of every little thing from food to the amount of toothpaste i used. I started this year still with the same struggles that i've had for the past three years and managing to fight through them and talk myself out of ending up on a path that would lead me back to where I was.

These past couple of months working with a trainer has not only improved my physical health and strength but helped me build a healthier relationship with food and with myself. Three years ago I could list you 100 things I hated about myself in less than 5 minutes.. now it would probably take me 5 minutes to find one. The things that I spent hours and weeks focusing on that I wanted to change and that I hated about myself have turned into the things that I love the most.

I still have hard days. I still have days where I struggle with it.. and it's always going to be like that. But being able to wake up every morning knowing what i'm going to eat for breakfast , lunch, and dinner and still seeing the results that I want from my workouts and still seeing the changes makes me feel 100 percent better.

There have been so many people that have asked me why I pay for a trainer if i'm qualified on my own and i've been doing it for so long I should be able to do it on my own. Sure i can do it on my own. But not having to think about what i'm going to do that day or what workouts makes things easier. It makes it so that I can focus more on the mental aspect .. and work more on my mental health as well.

It took my 3 years to realize that being healthy isn't just about exercise. It's not just about going to the gym all the time or eating healthy. Because you can do all of those things and still look at yourself in the mirror and hate everything you see. You can do all of those things and still struggle to get through the day without breaking down into tears. (Which yes i've done). Being healthy is being able to do all of those things because you love your body and you love your health.. not because you hate it. I don't do it because I don't think i'm good enough or I don't think I look good. I do it because I love it. I love the way it feels to wake up sore from a workout. I love the way I feel when I leave the gym and I love the way I feel when I get there.

March 28 2015

I spent years restricting foods that i deemed bad for myself. I spent years hating myself and trying to find a way to make myself "perfect". I spent years with this image in my head of what perfection was. One of the main things that I spent hours upon hours looking at and trying to hide was my stomach. I never deemed it good enough. I would spend hours upon hours picking out clothes that would hide the things that i hated most... which meant i wore sweaters and layers everyday to hide the one thing that I hated most. It's been almost 3 years to the date that I hit a wall and realized that I needed help. In the past three years i've gone through phases where I love my stomach and hate my stomach at the same time. I've gone through phases where I cover it up and hide it for the simple fact it's the only part that I wish that I could change. It's been almost 6 weeks. It's been almost 6 weeks since I decided to hire an online trainer and work towards getting my abs and a toned stomach. I had spent so long restricting myself of things that when I decided to recover I refused to restrict myself from anything... which wasn't helping me in anyway at all. Overall health isn't about restricting foods, it's about eating towards your goals and treating yourself. It's about embracing your body and the changes that it's making. There are so many things have changed in the past 6 weeks... not only has my body changed due to the workouts and my nutrition. But my thought process has changed. I've broken out of the fear of getting hurt again in a race, and signed up for a 5k in May. I've decided that i'm not going to let the fear of hurting my knee, or my hip, or my ankles again hold me back. I've decided to not let the fear of falling back into where I was hold me back from things. There has been so many times that I was scared to try new things, try new meal plans, or even new workouts because of the chance that i could relapse and end up back to where I was. It took so long for me to realize that I've grown so much from where I was three years ago. That i've been able to fight this for years. I've come to realize that the fear that I have in the back of my mind is what will keep me going and what will keep pushing towards a healthier lifestyle and not falling back into the place where I once was.
The pride that I have in myself each and everyday after my workouts is something that nobody can take away from me. The pride that I have in myself for overcoming the things that I've been through is something that nobody can ever take away from me. The amount of confidence that I've been able to build for myself is something that I continue to work on everyday. I've learned to put myself first and that loving yourself not selfish. We're told so many times that loving yourself and putting yourself first is selfish that nobody does. Nobody takes the time to take care of themselves first... and thats something that I will continue to work on, because when it comes down to it... you need to take care of yourself in order to be able to take care of someone else.

 I look at myself in the mirror and I smile. I look at myself in the mirror and I love what I see. Three years ago it was a completely different story. Three years ago I looked at myself in the mirror and broke down into tears. Three years ago I looked at myself in the mirror, and sat on the floor in utter disgust. I look at myself now, I look at where I am and what i've accomplished and I look back on where I was and the road that I was on... and I thank the people that left and I thank the people that stayed because without those people... I wouldn't be here. I don't know where I would be... I may have continued on that path... and then I wouldn't even be here at all. I'm a fighter.. I'm a survivor.. and I'll never stop fighting, because the second you stop fighting the voices in your head is the second that they win. I refuse to lose. I refuse to go back to where I was and I'll do whatever it takes to never go back to that thought process. 

Week 3

I'm into week three of the first phase of the working with Anthony my online trainer and I still could not be more happy as how it's going. Not only do I feel fantastic about myself and how it's coming so far but there's still so much more that I can accomplish. I feel so good after each workout and so proud of myself for crushing myself everyday.

These three weeks have gone by so quickly, and with so little struggle that it's hard to believe that i changed that much of my diet. But it's really gone to show that your nutrition changes everything when it comes to working out.

For the most part before I was eating a pretty balanced diet, but I would have late night binge sessions of cookies and tons of other junk food. It all eventually adds up. Now that i've cut out the bingeing on junk and cut out the extra sugars and bad carbs I've seen so much more results in fewer time.

This is just after a couple of weeks ... I can't wait to see how much progress i'll have made after the full 6 weeks when i'm heading into the second stage. My goal starting this six weeks was to lean out and get some abs before summer. I can honestly say that i'm well on my way to achieving my goal.

If you've thought about getting a personal trainer before but don't have the money to get someone that's one on one for your workouts.. go with an online trainer. At first I was a bit nervous as to how it would work out, because i'd never done it before.. but it was probably the best decision that i've made in a long time when it comes to my health and being able to change up my program and find something that works. It doesn't matter how much you know about working out, there's always someone out there that is going to be able to teach you something, and that's going to be able to enhance your workouts that much more and give you that push to bring you to the next level. I didn't think that I needed a trainer... but I thought I would try it for the experience ... now that i've tried it, I can't believe it took me that long to get one.

I love not thinking about what i'm going to workout that day. I love not having to think about what i'm going to make when I get home. I love that I can just open the book and look at the day and find the workout and know exactly what to do everyday without a second thought. It makes things 100 times easier. 

March 9 -- 1WK into new Program

Going into my second week with a trainer and I couldn't feel better about it. The nutrition and carb cycling is probably the hardest part, but everything else seems to be coming along easily. The workouts and being able to make it to the gym are fantastic.. and after the first week my body hasn't been completely and utterly in pain. I think the change in my diet combined with the new workout program sent my body into a shock and my muscles were not ready for it.
Now that it's been a little bit over a week i'm slowly starting to see some progress as well as feel it. The better i feel and the more minor progressions that I see in myself, the more excited I am to keep going and to continue in order to reach my goal.

I spent the first month and a half of this year going back and forth with the mindset of how I used to be. My workouts were slowly going downhill and my nutrition was a mild combination of bingeing and not eating enough of anything let alone what I actually needed. I was stressed and I couldn't concentrate on things. But I've managed to get things back on track, and now working with Anthony for this past week and a bit i've managed to pull myself back together and out of where I was slowly starting to fall back into.

It's just as much of a mental thing as it is a physical thing.. and I can't wait to reach my goals both physically and mentally.

January 2015

Looking back on this month , I can honestly say that it was successful. This month was a crazy win. Not only did I have a great news years and new years eve but I started a new job. Sure i'm super busy, but you get out of life what you put into it. There are so many people that have told me that I need to live more and go out and have fun because you're only 22 once. But honestly.. why wait? Why wait until you're 25 or 26 to start working towards your dreams. Start now. Start today.. start young and get ahead of the game. This year I told myself that 2015 would be all about the grind. I've worked my ass off for the past couple of years gaining back weight and getting to know myself. Understanding what I want out of life and who I want to be... now it's time to make it happen.
Yes there have been days that i've been so tired i'm not sure how i'm going it through the end of the day, and there are days that i get home and pass out from pure exhaustion. It's those days that I sit back and wonder if i can actually do it. It's those days that I really need to sit down and think about what I want to do in life and how bad i want to make it. In the end the fact that I want to succeed always out weighs the cons of the amount of work that needs to be put in.
It's only the end of January and I can already see so many possibilities and opportunities coming my way for this year. I made so many goals the start of December, and this is only the beginning of achieving those goals. I don't care how many people think i'm insane for working 3 jobs, or crazy for spending all of my free time working towards the bigger picture. It doesn't matter how many times I get told to live a little ... that i'm only young once;; Because if you don't do the work when you're young, you'll end up in your thirties and not know where to go. You'll be the one that's 29 or 32 that's still thinking about where you could be. The people that are successful are the ones that start young. That know what they want in life and go for it.

Jan 22 / 2015

There have been so many times that i've sat and looked back on how far i've come since the day I decided that I needed help and opened up to someone. There have been days that i've looked back and wondered how I managed to do it, and wondered if I was really as sick as I had thought. But then I look back on the pictures and things that I had written and I wonder how nobody ever asked if anything was wrong. How nobody noticed that I was slowly ruining my body. I look back on pictures and remember the decisions that I made and wonder how the people that I was friends with never noticed. How they never noticed my destructive behaviour.

There are so many times that I look back and think about how far i've come, but it wasn't until this week that I really put myself back into that mind frame. The reason I was destroying myself, and the reason why I decided to get help. It wasn't until this week that I really thought about what was going through my head at the time and how much i've changed through out the past couple of years.

People do change, you may not see it right away, and you might be stuck in the mind set of who they used to be so you pre judge them... but people change. People change because of the things they struggle with in silence. They change and they grow because of the different battles they face daily.

I've been told so many times throughout the years that what I struggled with and what I battled didn't make me weak. It didn't make me a bad person that I fell so far off the path. It doesn't make me a bad person that I spent years hating myself and destroying myself. It's taken me years to realize that the things that you go through don't make you a bad or a good person.. what does is how you deal with them. It's taken me a while to realize that it wasn't my fault and that mental illness isn't something you choose for yourself. I chose recovery... I didn't choose an illness.