Category: Diary

My weight has always been a big issue for me but it wasn’t until the recent years when it became the problem of my life, the rock that’s keeping me from being happy.  Over the past several years, I’ve been trying to get back to the normal weight I’ve had when I first moved to where I am about 5 years ago but the weights just kept piling on.

When I first set foot in the United States 12 years ago, I was 4′ 3″ and weighed 85 pounds.  At the time, I was already considered “fat” by my family and my classmates but to people here, I was considered tiny.  That made me feel a little better because for once, I wasn’t called fat.  However, as the years passed and 6″ later, my weight went up dramatically and it didn’t do me any good.  You see, I was born with small veins  and because of my Albright’s Syndrome, I have to go get my blood checked every 3 months or so.

With the weight gain, so did the difficulty of drawing blood grew.  Last May when I had the surgery in my leg, I was 115 pounds and it took the anesthetist almost 30 minutes to do the IV on me and in the end he still failed.  They gave up and had to use gas to knock me out.  This was just the beginning.  Since then, I gained another 4 or 5 pounds and the last few times I had to do lab work, it took at least 3 technicians before one of them could nail me.

I told my mom about it and she blamed me for not consistently exercising and gain weight.  That made me feel even worse than before I told her.  To be honest, I’ve always wanted to exercise but due to the pain I suffer in my legs and the lack of motivation, I gave up after a week or so.  My mom didn’t motivate me at all.  I mean if she had exercised with me and we did some fun activities together, maybe I wouldn’t get so bored and quit.  No, we both did our own things and before I knew it, I was about 120 pounds and sitting at home all day doing nothing.

About a month, I finally had an epiphany.  I was on my way to my doctor’s appointment, it was 40 degrees out and I had to walk two blocks or so from the bus stop to the clinic.  When I finally arrived at the clinic and climbed the two flights of stairs to the doctor’s office, I not only was sweating and breathless but my heart was beating like a helicopter.  By the time the nurse called me into the little room, my heart was still pounding and she put that little clip on my finger to check my pulse.  It was still 100.

I leaned back in my chair and thought, damn what’s happened to me? I was never so out of breath climbing stairs before.  Then I knew that it was time for me to commit to exercising again, to slip back into the routine I had two years ago when my mom made me go exercising everyday.

But how?

I need motivation, a reason to keep going. Then I thought of one, my future.  I need to be in better shape in order to find a job, work, and even start a family, maybe.  I also thought of writing because writing was the first long-term commitment for me.  So I thought if I can keep writing for this long, why not commit to going to the gym for just as long?

Since the end of March, I’ve been committed to go to gym five days a week while taking a break on the weekends and let my muscles rest.  Since then, I’ve successfully gone back to the weight I was over a year ago and I’m still on my way to lose more.  Now, I’m not only feeling better than before but by exercising, I feel like I’m thinking more clearly and doing better in school.