Wellness Wednesday: The Extra Push

Another week of plugging along with the wellness piece of my mental health recovery has proved well. From the surface it looks as if I have all the pieces of the wellness train together. At times, it can be real frazzled ball of mess of sorts. I guess two important keys I can leave you with is to keep busy and have a walking partner. If one person in the team isn’t doing so well, you need to be there for them because if a person say myself is doing well, I know that they are there by my side.

If you see my personal Facebook profile, you will see me reporting with my Fitbit Frames when I am walking and reach a milestone. While that is great and I feel that I do in tandem to support my walking partner (mom.) I know that they are supporting me by driving to my house, picking me up, listening to my negative ambiance and millions of excuses or statements of we will only go so far today.

But something happens.

We get on the trail; we take in nature.  We listen to the sounds, enjoy the flowers, the conversation that we share because we are there for each other. The food challenges we have, what we do on our own during the day, so on and so on. When we get to where I think we are going to stop, we decide to keep on going to the set of benches. When we get there and I think we are going back to the trailhead, she encourages me to keep going and when we go, its usually to where we left off the last time before.

Today, I sit where we stopped, and she says “there’s a bench a little bit down the trail”. My automatic response is “Are you OK getting there?” If she agrees we go and we did to the eighth set of benches down the trail from the trailhead. We made it 1.4 miles each direction, meaning 2.8 there and back. From just starting walking six weeks prior, this was no small accomplishment.

As we neared the end of today’s walk, my mom asked me if I was glad that we started walking. I didn’t have an answer because she kind of asked me spontaneously. I started off my saying that if I didn’t walk, I would be 400 pounds, of which I was almost 40 pounds to that point when I started walking. I still am surprised that I made it to the third bench that first day.

Regardless, it made me think. If I haven’t started back to weight loss support groups on Monday nights and started being serious with my food logging and expending energy and my mom and I mutually support each other in this regard. Our efforts aren’t always equally proven, but we support and encourage each other and sometimes we sabotage ourselves, but we pick each other up and make us both feel great.

By minding my health, this is the first time in over twenty-one years that the excessive weight that I am carrying is showing a positive and starting to come off. I know I haven’t put the weight on in a short time, but by both walking and eating, it is proving well for me to the point that I have over 20 pounds on my own by doing all these great things that make it well.

This past week, I was loser the week and Mr. Inspiration for April in my weight loss support group. While I was battling my bout of being down in the dumps before and after that meeting, I realize that I need to be grateful of what my weight loss has done for me and how continuous I have been at working at losing weight. I know it always won’t be this easy, but I know for now, this is what is working so I must stick to it because I don’t want to experience the alternative of being ill.

See you lighter next week!