Who am I and What led me to starting my weight loss journey?
Let us create the historical documents of Fatty Fatty No Friends!
I'd like to start by introducing you to Tiffany Sudduth in the spring of 2011. She weighed about 250-260 lbs, but she hadn't stepped on a scale in a couple years. She had gone to college for 5+ years, but she hadn't finished her degree. She'd met hundreds of people, and made hundreds of friends, but she had lost contact with almost all of them. She had a cute loving mom and dad, and two derpy brothers, but she was angry with her parents, and estranged from her family. She had just turned 24 years old in February, and after a long and complicated battle with depression that had raged since she was 10 years old, she was beginning at last to heal. She was a young woman who was raw, scared and still very sick, but the sky was lightening in the horizon, and dawn was finally on its way.
Of particular importance was her age: 24 years old. The thought occurred to her, and began to nag at her, that she had never imagined she would be alive at 24 years old. For quite a long time she had internalized, at the deepest level, a belief that she would not live past her very early twenties. Yet there she was. Alive, and still fighting.
When you're severely depressed, you spend a lot of time in the company of your own thoughts.
In the spring of 2011 I was at a distinctly turbulent place in my own Tiffany-universe. I had decided to fight the depression, and I had decided I wanted to beat it. I spent long hours wondering if I wanted to live or die. Not thinking about the issue in despair, but giving honest thought to it. Okay, so I had committed myself to taking medication, to focusing on my sluggish foe, what did this mean for my life? Well, I had to conclude that this meant I had decided to live. I looked at the options to live or to die. I thought of them without fear; objectively and calmly. I was not afraid to die, but I was quite afraid to live. Filled with a tense anticipation, I turned my thoughts towards my future. If I wanted to live my life out, what did that mean about HOW I was living it?
This was new to me. This planning, this honest analysis of myself, my life. My habit had always been to hide in fantasy and daydreams, constructing microcosms of people and places in my head in which to live. I was not accustomed to being "real" about myself. To looking at who I was in this world, what I was doing, and what life I was leading.
Looking back, the next step was really obvious.
If I was going to live; to really CHOOSE life, there were things I wanted to do, and being overweight was in the way of many of those things. There were things I wanted to do!!!
If I was going to be alive, I wanted to go skydiving, running, swimming, biking, rock climbing and hiking. I wanted to have the energy to do those things! I wanted to dress in pretty clothes, and put together fun outfits. I wanted to wear shorts, short sleeves, and dresses. I wanted to be blissfully in love. I wanted to experience intimacy on a level I hadn't ever sought before, and I wanted to have really good sexy times!
In the spring of 2011 I was raw, scared and sick, but I was healing.
I chose to live, and in so choosing I set out on a journey to transform my body to be a tool that would fit the life I wanted to live.
