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The Time To Change Is Now! Since I was a little girl, I’ve had issues with food. I know that this is typical of many obese adults, but few I’m sure started out their ‘fight’ with food as early as I did. At the tender age of two months my mother could no longer breast feed me as I could not hold down her milk. She also found that I could not hold down cows milk either. To keep me from getting dehydrated, she kept me on a mixture of boiled water, sugar and salt, the kind commonly prescribed for infants with diarrhoea. After attending hospital for two months the doctors could not diagnose what was wrong with me. In desperation my grandmother took me to a private physician, which in those days cost an arm and a leg. The diagnoses he gave was unheard of at that time and my parents took me to a number of doctors, who, similarly to the hospital doctors, could not find the cause of my illness. Eventually my parents followed the advice of the doctor whom my grandmother had taken me to see. By this time I was five months old and was kept alive by the water mixture. I was not developing normally and something had to be done. The problem was a milk allergy. Whenever my mother gave me any, it came straight back up. The answer at that time was goat’s milk. The first six years of my life I was as skinny as a rail. Besides my resistance to milk, I could also not eat a number of foods which irritated my bowel. By the time I was a teenager, I had outgrown many of these intolerance’s. This was except for the lactose intolerance. From the age of six years I steadily began to pick up weight. My mother laughingly said that my new found appetite was due to the years of near starvation. This remark recently hit home for me. I found myself at age 30 weighing a whopping 94 kilograms after the birth of my second child. How could this have happened? When did it happen? I started to look for answers. Yes, I knew that I had gained weight after each birth, but 94 kilograms, the scale had to be wrong. Wait a minute, to be really honest I’ve never really been thin have I (except the ‘early’ years)? All through high school, despite having been quite sporty (hockey, tennis, netball and soccer) I was still considered chubby. It didn’t bother me a great deal back then because it did not affect my life that drastically. I had lots of friends even boyfriends and they didn’t seem to mind. Suddenly my weight did matter, I didn’t like it. When I think back to the times through the years that I had dieted… I realise now that although I forced myself to go on them, it was to please other people and not really because I wanted to. It took me one year and eight months to get prepared mentally to start what I called, ‘my journey to health’. The 1st September 2002 was the day I started. I was surprised by the feelings which engulfed me. I knew it would require a total mind shift from what my lifestyle had become, but I was scared beyond words. What if I stopped after a week, a month, what would this say about me as a person. Would this mean that the stereotype of That was one year 2 months ago, and five and a half kilograms ago. It’s been tough. I somehow imagined that once I had made up my mind to lose the weight, that I would remain motivated until I lost every ugly kilogram. Well I’m learning a lot about motivation and myself in the process. I have reached that place where I can actually ‘see’ the thin me. I have not embarked on this journey to please anyone. Anyone but me that is. I will succeed! - come hell or high water (well maybe I’ll have to stop at the former). I love myself and will continue to love myself but will never learn to love my body the way it is now. I can no longer justify the breathlessness, the lower back pain, the heartburn, my inability to dance around with my kids until they want to stop….. The time to change is now! Written and submitted by Avril You can submit you own experiences to be published by sending your story to List of articles written by Mands..... Read More PS.... read and share the stories already published
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