Let's Get Personal

It’s time to get really personal and talk about something I’ve never really talked about on my blog, but thought about countless times. Actually I didn’t even know if I would post this at first, but I went ahead and wrote it to see how I felt about it. 

Like all women, I am always battling the desire to be thinner, but also to do it with a good balance of exercise, healthy eating and knowing when it’s really okay to go ahead and treat myself. Since I came overseas, this balance has been really hard for me to keep. In the States it was much easier. But this new lifestyle threw me into a tailspin and I just haven’t been able to get my head above water since I got here. But interestingly enough, that very thing, water, helped me to get out of that tailspin and bring balance back to the health part of my life. 

Before              and                After
-12lbs

This spring I was at an all-time low, or you could say high, since I arrived here. I had injured my leg, and I’m not even sure how it happened or when it will go away, but I am sure of one thing, swimming is the only thing that helps. Back to the injury, a few months into it I had packed on about 8 pounds on top of the 15 pounds I had packed on in the past three and a half years since we had been here! I was so ashamed of the way my body had become. I felt so lazy because every time I tried to exercise my leg would get worse and I just could not get myself disciplined with food unless I was exercising. 

My physical therapist told me that swimming could help my leg, so I started to gradually go swimming. At first it was 2-3 times a week and eventually five times a week through which it grew into a passion! I really fell in love with it, and still it is the only thing that helps my leg! 

Swimming wasn’t enough at first, but it helped me in disciplining my eating, I started to count my calories after seeing a photo of myself taken by a guy on our team who said it looked normal, while I was thinking “Is that really me?” Anyhow, somehow it always starts with a photo right? I had been finding most photos just downright depressing at that time.

One of the said photos

I wish I had that photo, but I don’t, he deleted it quickly after he saw how disturbed I was by it. I only had a photo that I had taken the summer before when I was actually a little bit thinner than I was earlier this year. I was just too ashamed to take a before photo, and to be honest, I didn’t know if there would be an after. Until a few weeks into it when I realized I was super determined, but it was already too late, I had lost five pounds within just a few weeks. 

It’s taken me a bit longer as I continue to lose the rest. So far it’s a total of 16 pounds, but I know that my body is changing so much because of the swimming. I took this after photo when I had lost 12 pounds. It’s been a while and I’ve only lost four more pounds since then, which means I am ten pounds from my goal. I am not as concerned about the numbers as I was to begin with because I realize that my body is changing, and as they say muscle weighs more than fat.

Before            and              After
-16lbs

I know that this may seem irrelevant to life overseas, but it’s been a big part of MY journey, and finding swimming as a form of exercise and even a way to get out and be a part of the community has transformed the way I look at life here. Also, being able to sustain a healthy lifestyle in this country is very important to me. That takes a lot of discipline and work when you develop a love for baking and work in a cafe with lots of sweets around all the time and part of your job is to taste those things. I found that counting calories worked best for me because I can’t always avoid sweets, but I can make changes elsewhere. So that really transformed the way that I looked at food. 

I am just so grateful because I know that this is something that Papa is doing in my life. It’s not just me. I felt it at the beginning and I know it because I feel like I was made to be a swimmer. Not a pro or anything. But I think He just knew that I would love being in the water and that it would just be an all around great and healthy thing for me. 

I do hope that this mystery injury goes away soon, but I am so grateful that it drew me toward swimming and ultimately to gaining and hopefully sustaining a healthy lifestyle in the country that I am in.