Part 17: Pursuing Hope

I don’t know what has halted my progress for so long, but whatever it is still threatens me now. I have examined my determination and found it lacking, I want to succeed but have constantly procrastinated. Success isn’t like the movies, it isn't some inspirational speech followed by a minute of montage sequence.

Success for me will mean pain, sweat, vigilance and facing my problems head on.  Success will be a compromise between my mind and stomach, a fragile agreement of identifying treats allowed and poison. I know what I need to do. It can’t be more clear. I don’t need a dietitian or personal trainer.

I need to eat simply. Avoid the poison. I need to exercise. Harder than I ever have before. I need to kill my demons and fall in love with slaying them on a daily basis… If I’m not prepared to do this I should give up. Damn I know I want to sometimes. But hope is the little voice telling me off when I cheat, It’s the guilt I feel when I have something bad, even if there isn't anyone to see me… That little voice of hope may save my life.

 

I really do want to beat this and when I do I have given a lot of thought into what I’m going to do, I have decided I’m not going to destroy the Eli inside me that suffered through this horrible life altering nightmare, I’m going to use the good that I can draw from it. I hope I always have the sensitivity being larger than life has instilled in me. I hope I take every little tiny good thing that I has been instilled over the years and incorporate it into the new me.

So I’m going to get there. Somehow. Someday. I’m going to do it for all the people that are going to need me in their lives one day… and I’m going to do it for me. I want to see my nephew grow up. I want to wear a beautiful wedding dress… just kidding, But I want to do amazing things and I can’t do them trapped in my fat suit.

Part 16: One step at a time

Somedays I look in the mirror and don't recognise myself, my illness swallowed my features and hid me for so long. I'm only now returning to the realm of expressions! Its really weird to see my face move with less weight on it... Its a small change but I love it. I still don't feel like a samurai warrior but I admit on days like this I bloody love who I am. I am going to be spectacular.

Its a good feeling, that little bit of progress opens the floodgates and a little more progress trickles through. Bit by bit I'll rejoin humanity and cease being the exile I once was. I know I'll be happy when strangers judge me for my character first instead of my weight as they damn well should anyway. One day people will look at photos of me and say "You look like you ate two of you." and I'll say "I probably could have".

Its a strange thing, I started running today. I wasn't being chased, no car was coming and no candy store was having a clearance sale (I'm allowed to say this I'm heavier than you.). I just started running and while my burst of energy was short and sweet no one can deny the fact the it materialised. Small miracles should be celebrated.

For some people the idea of me running must seem bizarre, the was a time I couldn't even do my own shopping and had other people kindly offer. Well for those people who helped me I offer to you now the chance to reap the benefit of your generosity... I'll go on walks for you and pick up whatever you need but please never help me again. next time make me do it, because I need to. I love you guys and I'll be around far longer this way.

I walked a relatively short distance today, but it was a distance I struggled with previously... today it was no problem. Its the most wonderful feeling in the world to go from feeling half dead to not even remembering what that was like. I know I'm not out of the woods yet but when I am... I'm going to burn the whole forest again. I'm going to win. I'm going to be healthy. I'm never going in those woods again. Its a slow road, but I can walk, I can stumble and when I need it I have some of the most amazing people in my life to carry me.

Eli Nelson. 

Part 15: Keeping up the fight.

The hardest part of being severely overweight is the soul crushing lack of motivation that comes with it, the apathetic feeling that somehow makes everything that should be important to you just not matter, the act of dressing up for company subsides and the food stupor leaves you hibernating inside instead of facing the world. Many little things stack up into one giant problem and you realise one bloody terrifying thing... you are depressed.

Its easy to fall into a pattern of self loathing and disdain, It is almost impossible to break. I sometimes lose myself looking in the mirror trying to recognise the creature peering back at me. I wonder how I could be so stupid to let me get this size, I compare myself to what I imagine people want to look like and I shudder. On every day that I do this I count myself lucky... because those are the days I care.

The worst days are the ones where I pretend It's all ok, that I don't mind the face staring back it me, when I don't mind the way I look and feel... when I ignore the shudder and pretend I'm ok. Thats the apathy. Its insidious and hard to eradicate but I am finding its possible.

Every day I wake up and face a different Eli, sometimes I'm motivated some days I'm not, most days I am an indiscernible mixture of the two. I try to make the most of the positive and minimize the negative. I attempt to power through the depressing thoughts and some days I lose. The point is a the moment I am trying and for the first time in my adult life I'm winning more than losing and I count that as a victory worth celebrating.

I know this is a long road and I have only begun my journey but I'd like to think the fact the I have begun any journey is a welcome sign, so onwards to happiness and what not!

Eli Nelson

Part 14: I can't believe its not butter.

Supermarket shopping was once a highlight of my week when I was a fat guy unrestricted by the constraints of healthy eating, a time filled with a variety of sugar and salts and carbs packaged in a dazzling variety of wrappings that all unwrap into the same thing... obesity. So now that I'm trying to be conscious of my decisions and work on my health I'm finding shopping to be difficult for a variety of reasons...

Reason number one is that junk food is so much cheaper!!! bottled water vs soft drink is terrible, cheap fatty meat like sausages and mince costs almost nothing compared to a healthy cut of meat. Fruit is expensive compared to other snack items  and veges are a costly investment... so you may understand that the temptation to just throw my hands in the air and stomp off to the confectionery aisle threatens to take over. Resistance is useless! buy the junk food! Argh... Sorry about that it is rather difficult to resist though and it only takes that one moment to put an item you really don't need into your trolley and you are mentally eating it already... its won.

I saw something that made me laugh, a lite cream cheese while being the same price as regular cream cheese of the same brand contained less contents that the unhealthy one, its like its daring you to choose to be healthy... now I was going to say "how do you like them apples" but unfortunately the apples were to expensive for me to buy any for this quote.

Reason number two would have to be the horrible (read junk food) specials, its always biscuits or chocolate, lollies or ice cream! it doesn't often seem like veges or fruit get a discount. it Is really hard trying to be good and feeling ripped off for your healthy decisions, investing in my body's well being is expensive it seems. Healthy specials would rock and leave me feeling much richer after my weekly shops but it seems not to be! I know its a shame that money doesn't grow on trees but I was rather certain alot of healthy stuff did!

If it wasn't already hard to be good $2 blocks of chocolate specials are a nightmare on your willpower... if you let them be, there is this strange little boost of power you feel every time you walk on past every bakery, fish and chip shop and chocolate bar, its little but my god it adds up, refusing junk food makes me feel much better than eating it. 

The only good thing I can take from supermarkets is that they are the best test for someone with an addiction like me, I know I can't ignore the existence of junk food, it will always be there and I won't overcome my addiction in a vacuum, I need to go out and ignore all the wailing advertisements and the cost of being healthy. By doing this I will be more powerful for it. Onwards and upwards I guess! Huzzah!

Eli Nelson

180ish Kgs.

Part 13: Who the hell am I?

As I continue on this path of weight loss I'm going to discover the ability to do things I have never done before because I have been to limited, I will get the opportunity to decide again if I like these things rather that have the decision dictated to me by my inability to do it. Who knows what I'll like in a year... on that same note I face a slight identity crisis.

A problem I have faced as a big guy is a lack of role models that I can Identify with. Where are the plus sized super heroes, rock stars or athletes (oh wait scrap the last one.), what I'm saying is I want to identify and see myself reflected in the world but its hard when no one looks like me... Its harder still when the people in charge actively decide to slim down already hefty characters!

If anyone has watched disney's the little mermaid they'll be familiar with the villain Ursula, she was a larger than life diva who threw her literal weight around. She was an iconic villain, but Disney decided that slimmer is better and have released toys of her with a tiny waistband and flowing dress. The old Ursula looks like she could eat the new one and maybe she damn well should. The Queen of hearts in Alice and wonderland was also slimmed down for the modern screen and her dolls have been given involuntary liposuction. So now even traditional villains can't have a weight problem? Because they won't appeal to the majority? Oh screw that!

Don't get me wrong I do have my role models (or roll models) Nick Frost and Jack Black are both or the husky side and manage to be awesome but there are very few people who I can identify with. Whenever someone tells me I reminf them of someone famous they are almost always larger than life, not a skinny but a fat one, thats how others see me, two weeks ago I was told I remind my flatmate of Sam on game of thrones who is the only fat character. how is it that among hundreds of characters my role model is picked for me as the fat "one". In media most fat people are portrayed as either the villain or comic relief and that's just not good enough, does a fat main character change the plot that much of most things? whats the worst that could happen? Luke Skywalker not fitting in his X-wing? Superman's tights a little tighter?

I'm trying to figure out what makes me... well me. For so long I have carried the persona of being just "a fat person"... making jokes at my expense and being ok with it. So hugely does my view of myself depend on my weight condition that a big part of this transition is mental. I really need to reinvent myself as something besides the obese guy in the room... but I'm uncertain how to proceed. Will I ever identify with skinny role models and maybe more importantly... should I have to?

Part 12:The truth about terror

To be obese (and yes every agitated particle of my being hates using that word) means to live in fear of phantom illnesses, to be worried not about what you have now but whats right around the corner. I want to tell you the fears I have carried since I was a little boy... but by even voicing them I feel like I'm breathing life to them. The only reason I'm able to discuss them now is because I know that there is hope for me to get better rather than fall to them.

Diabetes are a haunting nightmare, the kind that will never go away. I live in fear of contracting an illness that is already in older generations of my family. Knowing that I'm extremely at risk never helps alleviate that fear. Every time my doctors want to check for it I deflate and go somewhere else in my head. Its getting to the point I don't want to be tested for it anymore which is not one of my most intelligent reasoning's.

Becoming bed bound has been a fear for the last year or so, knowing that I might get to the point where I literally couldn't move was terrifying beyond belief. The idea of being a young adult confined to a room because of my own stupid choices seems impossibly far fetched... but I was making that a reality, a horrible disgusting reality. I have work to do before that is no longer a possibility, only persistence will see me through.\

Lets mention the one thing I have spent my adult life living in mortal fear, that cold feeling I get when my body starts to tingle, my chest bubbly and my world spin. I'm talking about heart attacks. I have never had one. I don't know what it would feel like, I can't imagine. What I can imagine however is that every single affliction I have that is inexplicable is somehow a heart attack in my head. My mind tells me I'm going to die, disregarding how the rest of me feels. It tells me this is the end and through my fear I believe it. I could tell you how many times I have cried in front of my friends and asked them to check in on me, or I could tell you the amount of times I have gone to the hospital and had the gel smeared on my chest to scan my heart but i think you get the point.

Fear, horror and a grizzly end is what I always imagined waiting for me, people have warned me I may die these ways or perhaps worse... live these ways. I'm terrified, it has never gone away and I doubt it ever will. It is not the way to live, jumping at shadows and finding your insecurities, but I don't know any other way to live. I'm hoping losing weight also results in being able let go of this fear I have carried with me.

Eli Nelson

Part 11:Encounters of the awkward kind

Weird encounter today, I was in one of those places where you buy food... oh yes a supermarket, I was shopping with a friend for groceries when I wandered off from her to find something, when I came back I found her talking to a complete stranger about the weirdest topic... me.

It turns out that this lady had followed us into the supermarket and noticed my legs (sadly no not in that way). Since I was eighteen I have suffered from severe leg infections and cellulitis which has discolored part of my skin. ouch! The reason she decided to talk to us is because she had personal experience with diabetes. She had just finished telling my friend this when I returned.

I know what she was trying to do, I even appreciate what she was trying to do but what she ended up doing was turning a nice morning out into an opportunity to feel different and damn it I have enough of those. It wasn't just me that was mortified and embarrassed my friend was also shocked, I am so glad my friend knew me so well and we got the hell out of there so bloody fast.

I get this kind of thing a fair amount, Most of the time its people trying to help sometimes its people wanting to talk absolute rubbish but it all hurts no matter how positive the spin on it. I don't care about the situation you just don't randomly approach a stranger and assume you know what they are going through. I'm not saying I haven't thought about it, dear god I have wanted to tell every chubby kid the road they might have ahead of them, to do anything to help them but it just isn't ok to meddle.

The experience today left me feeling something to be gawked at, It made me double check through my groceries for anything unhealthy and if I'd found anything I would have put it back out of shame. How can strangers have such an effect on us, I don't know these people and hopefully I'll never see them again. I look forward to the day I can pass myself off as normal.

Eli Nelson