Hello!  How are you?  Me, I am fine. Today is Administrative Professionals Day! 🎉 I took myself out to lunch to celebrate (I work as an administrative assistant)

Let’s talk about the following statement:

I am not my weight. 

About a year ago I hit my lowest weight of 168.6 pounds. It was awesome. I was obsessed with getting below 170. The obsession was a little unhealthy, now that I am looking back on it. I wrote the number 169 everywhere so I wouldn’t lose focus.  I exercised like a maniac. I watched every little morsel of what went in my mouth. I was obsessed with getting 16,000 steps a day and over a gallon of water. I was happy and didn’t feel obsessed at the time. Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t. But looking back I obviously have not been able to sustain that weight or that schedule/lifestyle. 

Then I trained for and ran my first marathon and gained back a few pounds but it was fine because I was running a marathon.  I was back to the 170’s but it was no big deal. I would shed those extra five pounds and get back to it. 

Then I had a situation a week after the marathon where I was completely degraded and torn apart by someone who I should have been in a trusting relationship with. It left me in tears and feeling very damaged. And I began a downward spiral of being disconnected from my body, my goals and my emotions. I kept running, but my food became my friend again and I went through some big personal changes and the holidays came and I changed jobs at the end of the year.  This spiral went on for months. And now, here I am, finding myself past the 160’s, 170’s AND 180’s, at a solid 191 pounds. Yep. 22 pounds from a year ago. 

When I think about last year, if I were to be asked what my biggest accomplishments were, the first one would be the marathon with my rockstar finish time of 6:07:28. Then shortly in line after that I would say getting cast in a musical, getting offered the first job I interviewed for, and PRing every race distance last year. 

Nowhere on there does the pounds I gained or lost make the cut. 

It has taken me a long time to really understand what it means when I say “I am not my weight”. I know that when I weigh less I run faster and more of my clothes fit, but weighing more or less doesn’t take away what I accomplish or what I’m working towards. 

I am determined to find my focus again and get back to the 160’s and ultimately, my goal of 164.2, but even if that takes longer than I realized it would, I feel a little wiser this time around and a little less obsessed with the number. It will come if I work for it. It will stay if I can learn to live a balanced lifestyle. 

So I’ve found my focus again because my Weight Watchers leader reminded me that I am “all in” and that I can just keep making the best choices. I can and I will. 

Cheers to being all in,

Vanessa