My Weight Loss Journey

Like many women I’ve struggled with my weight my entire life and now I’m realizing that weight loss is a journey similar to the story of the tortoise and the hare: slow and steady wins the race.

I’ve tried so many diets, it’s borderline disgusting. Our bodies are temples and we should pamper them every chance we get. However, with the plethora of diet manuals available today it can be very difficult to distill what you feel most comfortable with. Here’s a glimpse into how I developed my Aphrodite Attitude about weight loss.

Last year, I truly committed to changing the way I look at how I nourish my body and my epiphany came about in the most unexpected way. Last spring I was walking to the library and I wasn’t paying attention to the sidewalk in my neighborhood; the people in the community planted trees on the curb and while the theory is awesome, the reality is a total nightmare, but I digress. As I was walking to the library, my sneaker got caught in one of the cracks from a tree that made the sidewalk uneven and I landed really hard on my knees. Not only were my knees swollen, the fall had taken off a good 2 or 3 layers of skin from my right knee. I managed to see a doctor and get a brace to help control the swelling and it took about three weeks for my knees to feel better. Little did I know that my struggle was just beginning…

After I recovered from the fall I started getting back into my old routine of walking around the neighborhood to go to the library or grocery store and get some exercise. One day as I walked home from Rite Aid, my lower back completely gave out. Thank God my dad was already coming to watch football with me and was able to get me to the emergency room. The doctor told me I had a back spasm and sent me home with a prescription for ibuprofen and told me to get at least three days’ bed rest.

I’m the type of person that hates sitting still so after I finished the required bed rest and took the ibuprofen to ease the pain and went back to my normal routine. The first couple of days were great, but when I had to accompany my dad at the hospital for a procedure to prep him for dialysis all hell broke loose! We got to the hospital an hour early and the procedure took about 2½ hours. After the procedure, I met my dad in the recovery room and sat with him for a little while. Don’t get me wrong, I love my dad to death and I would do anything for him, but after looking after him in the recovery room for about 45 minutes, by back started to feel like it was on FIRE!! I tried to brush it off, but the pain just kept getting worse and started spreading to my hips. My dad saw how much pain I was in and told me to go back to the car and lay down. You know that kind of pain where you can barely move and you look like you are 90 years old because you’re moving an inch per minute? That’s an understatement about how severe that back injury was. A specialist told me that when I fell on my knees, my body responded with, “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?!” and my lower back and hips locked up to protect me.

Long story short, I spent about 8 months recovering (in total) from that injury and the majority of the time I had to lay in bed to ease the pressure (at least 18 hours for about 5½ months). It turns out that my back injury was a blessing in disguise! During the recovery process, I revamped my diet to accommodate the fact that I couldn’t sit or stand for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Subtle changes to my diet like swapping sweet yogurt for Greek yogurt with granola (when I could get myself out of bed) and drinking protein shakes on my bad days. About three months into my recovery, my friends and family started asking me if I was working out against medical advice because I’d apparently lost a considerable amount of weight. When I told them that I had only tweaked what I ate, they told me to keep it up and suggested that I start writing down the changes I made and what results came of them.

I did just that and the results left me flabbergasted! When I went back to the specialist who diagnosed me, she told me that I had lost 30 pounds in those six months and that my back and hips look like nothing ever happened!

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