My Weight Path in 2009

2009 started a whole new way of eating living for me my family.

My weight has always been an up and down source of frustration for my.  Highest after my pregnancies, of course, lowest after my divorce!

In 2002 when I met my husband I was at a low weight, felt great, and looked great too!

FabHubs loved to cook too!  He would make all sorts of wonderful meals for me.  One morning he surprised me at home with a cooler…and in the cooker was homemade sausage gravy and homemade biscuits…all from scratch too!  They were still warm from the oven at his house.

Over the course of the next four years, he began to do all of the cooking in the house, and I began to gain weight. 

By 2009 I was at my all-time high, and weighed more than 50 pounds higher than I was when I  first met FabHubs.

I weighed slightly more than I did in the ninth month of my first pregnancy!!!

Compound this with getting older as well as a form of muscular dystrophy that I have which makes my legs very weak, in 2009 I found myself in the worst shape of my life.

Even though I have never been able to do everything physically that everyone else could, I have always pushed myself to try to do as much as I can.  I have camped, hiked, spent a summer physically active in Israel, gone to the gym, and more…even when it was uncomfortable or I just couldn’t do it like everyone else could.

But I had let myself go…..and by spring 2009 I couldn’t do basic outdoor physical activities without assistance.  I have always prided myself on being independent…but this gradually came to a halt and more and more I was finding I had to depend on my husband for help.  This really frightened and upset me!

When camping, on the air mattress on the floor, I was unable to get up by myself.  FabHubs had to pick me up.   Same if I fell down…and because my legs were so weak, I fell easily.  If I stepped wrong and my foot didn’t land flat on the floor, if I bumped into something and it threw me off balance, or if someone ran into me…down I would go.  And once I fell down, I needed to be picked up…I couldn’t get up myself.  If I was alone I had to  struggle to get to a chair or couch or something…and then somehow get myself up…a total exertion, and an exhausting, frustrating, humiliating process.

Sometimes one of my legs would just buckle…and that was that…down I went!

Even though I wasn’t even over 200 pounds, my poor weak legs just couldn’t handle  what they had to carry around.

Between January and June 2009 I found that I was falling more and more frequently!!  And that frightened me.

I began to find more and more that I was unable to get up from many chairs…chairs without arms, low chairs and benches, even  folding camping chairs…FabHubs would have to pick me up from them.   Doctor’s office waiting rooms,  mall sofas, movie theater chairs, even restrooms….all became areas that most people sit down to rest without a second thought, but for me, many times I would just stand rather than sit down and take a chance I could not get up.  And that frightened me!

Stairs…daunting for people with this disease at a normal weight, became almost impossible.   You may as well have been asking me to tackle Mt. Everest.

Even walking was starting to get difficult.   I could make a mile on a walking course…but by two miles I would be concerned that my now tired legs would give out and I would fall.

This disease runs in the family….my mother and aunt both have it too.  And neither of them have taken care of themselves.   I could easily see where I would/could be in 25 years.  And that frightened me too!

By nature I love being active  and am a thrill-seeker.  After my divorce  I jumped out of an airplane, as a teen I hiked to the top of Mt. Masada and worked on a kibbutz, I loved being on the back of a racing rice rocket (those fast Japanese motorcycle!!!) and learned to drive them myself (the only reason I never got one was again the weakness….I worried about my legs, and that I didn’t have the strength to pick it up if I dropped the bike!)

I LOVE the outdoors…hiking…canoeing….the mountains.  I don’t mind roughing it at camp.  And while I have never been able to do everything I have wanted physically and have always needed some type of help….or was always the last one in….still, I had always been able to make it.

And now I finally realized that I may not be able to do any of these things anymore.

And that frightened me!!!!!

I did do not want to be some wheelchair-bound, dependent  old lady…especially at the young age of 50 or 60 (I am not there yet!!!!)

And the only one who would be able to prevent that is ME!!!

And so in June 2009 I finally decided to take matters into my own hands!!!

To Be Continued……