For those of you who don't know what lupus is, it's a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease in which your body basically becomes allergic to itself. What that means is your immune system is attacking your body pretty much at all times. In mild cases, you see joint pain, fatigue, some memory/cognitive issues. On the more extreme side, you have organ involvement and the development of other diseases. I have moderate disease.
On top of that, my husband and I made the beginnings of some potentially great friendships with people who get living with a chronic illness and who, like us, don't want to wallow and want to enjoy life. I cried several times during the various breakout sessions, but they were tears of joy, as I worked on forgiving myself for isolating myself and for treating myself so poorly as a punishment for what my body was doing when I couldn't control it.
Up until the last year, I have really let my illness act as a crutch and an excuse for my not being as healthy as I can be within the limits of my disease. I blamed the weight gain on medication but didn't do anything to make it better. I blamed the lack of exercise completely on joint pain - and while sometimes it was legit I was really just afraid to cause more pain. But after some really scary and what we thought at the time were life threatening situations, I gained a new perspective on life and really started to make changes in how I eat and my movements. It started slow by cutting out the candy several times a day, and getting up and walking to a coworkers office instead of yelling or sending IMs.
Then I started walking my dog daily and each day the walk would get longer and longer. Next came yoga, my love and passion. Finally, I started cooking. The transformation has been epic, if I do say so myself. I'm 40lbs down and most importantly I feel better about myself than I have in a long time.
I mentioned a few posts back that I have severely fallen off the wagon. First it was my birthday, and who the hell doesn't have cake or something for their birthday. But my birthDAY turned into a birthweek. Then my husband was out of town and I got sick. So I went for easy to make no frills processed food. And before I knew it I was back on the ugly cycle of not working out, eating horribly and feeling worse. I stepped on the scale yesterday and saw that I had gained weight since Wednesday's weigh-in and it was a huge slap in the face and wake up call.
NO MORE. Today I recommit to eating healthy. I'm heading out to the farmers market in about ten minutes and then to yoga. Today I begin again.
That's the beauty of life, though, isn't it. Every day is a new day to recommit yourself and start again.
To keep myself in check, I decided to be super brave and post some journey pictures.
At my highest weight at a friend's wedding last summer:
At the beginning of my journey in January 2012
In Amsterdam this summer:
Two weeks ago:
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