Health

Fortunately, I am not someone who has struggled with weight and good health their whole life. I've always been relatively healthy even though I didn't necessarily eat properly or exercise daily. As a kid I was very active doing fun kid things, like riding my bike around the neighbourhood or swinging on the swing set out back. This kept me very lean and toned and strong.

When I was about nineteen I started to have issues with my weight. At that time I had a therapist who wanted to put me on anti-depressants, even though I adamantly said that I really wanted to work on my depression psychologically, since I felt that my issues are not chemically related. I knew that I needed to change the way my mind thought about the way I looked and not just take a pill that would only make me feel better. I wanted to be better. I later realised that he was getting a kickback from the psychiatrist who prescribed the medication to me, which is why he pushed so hard for me to try Prozac. After Prozac he wanted me to try Effexor. I vividly remember sitting on his sofa and hearing him tell me, "You'll love it. You'll lose ten pounds right away." Immediately I thought, "Oh my god, do I need to lose ten pounds??!" I didn't. I was probably about 125 pounds and at 5'5" that was already a very healthy weight for me. Just by that simple statement, I began to obsess about my weight as I never had before. I always disliked how I looked, but that never had anything to do with how much I weighed. It was about my face. Since then I've gone up and down with my weight from that original 125 to a little more than 200 pounds and then back down then up again.

It wasn't until very recently that I made a conscious and valiant effort to convince myself that I loved to exercise. It's one of the things on my list that I read to myself every night. "I love to exercise, eat healthy food, and read." It's actually starting to work because those days when I'm not waking up and exercising (because you should really only workout 6 days a week so as to give your body a little rest) I find myself feeling a little lost. Like I left something behind. For me, if it isn't fun, I will lose interest and stop completely. I do the Tony Horton P90 (not P90 X - I'm SO not at that level yet) and wii Fit and more recently I've discovered Marisa Tomei's Core and Curves workout. (I mean, who doesn't absolutely adore this woman? She's so adorable and vivacious that the workout feels painless. Almost.) It's only been a couple months since I've gone hardcore with working out, but I definitely feel better knowing that I am on the path to great health and hopefully a more toned physique. Most importantly, I'm looking to feel more comfortable in my own body; okay, and admittedly, to be able to wear those super cool dresses I bought on ModCloth that are just a wee bit too tight at the moment...