Happy Sunday everyone! It was brought to my attention the other day that I haven’t blogged about how I actually came to be writing this blog at all, which probably should have been my very first blog post.  I guess I quite often don’t do things in the right order, if there ever is a right order, but I don’t really think it matters as long as we get there in the end does it?  Anyway, that is what today’s blog is going to be about.  So for those of you who don’t know me, I am Shari Ware from Why Weight Loss Institute and I am someone who has struggled with my weight for basically my whole life.

I will try to tell my story as concisely as possible, because otherwise, we will be here forever!  I basically started to gain weight from the age of 5 and by the time I finished primary school, I was about 60kg and definitely the fat kid.  By the time I finished highschool, I was 100kg.  After I turned 18, I decided that I wanted a boyfriend and I wanted an attractive boyfriend.  Very vain and shallow I know, but that’s the truth of it.  I felt that the only way that I was going to find an attractive boyfriend was to lose weight, and so I did.  I lost about 30kg, getting down to around 70kg and suddenly became very attractive to the opposite sex.  I definitely did not go about it the right way though.  I became addicted to weight loss and figured that the less I ate and the more I exercised, the more I would lose in a shorter period of time, so I ended up eating 1 meal every second day and the rest of the time survived on water, water and more water.  I also exercised excessively.  I am very lucky that I didn’t do major damage to my health.  I knew so little back then.  Thankfully, I have learned so many things over my weight loss journey that I would never ever do that again!

Anyway, back to my plan.  It worked.  I lost weight and acquired a boyfriend.  We were young, stupid and in love and of course I ended up pregnant within a year, and of course I put all my weight back on during my pregnancy.  After I had my beautiful baby, I was a busy working mum and although I tried to find time to exercise, I wasn’t very successful most of the time and I ate too much of things that aren’t good for my body.  Year after year I put on more and more weight.  My partner and I also had relationship issues which I dealt with by emotional eating a lot of the time.  I also had years of yo-yoing with my weight.  I would lose 10kg and then something would happen and I would go off the rails and put 15 back on.  By the time we split for the final time, I was around 160kg and very very unhappy.  For the next 7 years I kept yo-yoing and eventually got to my heaviest.  I don’t know exactly what that was, but I do know that it would have been over 180kg.  I was in such a bad place.  Outwardly I was happy, but inside was a whole different story.  I was literally a walking heart attack.  I was soooooo lucky that I got through so many years of being so massively overweight without developing any major health problems.  I got to the point where I cried every morning when I put my feet on the floor for the first time and stood up on them, because it hurt so much.  I had to give myself a minute for the pain to subside before I could even start walking.  I had to turn sideways or duck into a doorway when walking down the hallway at work because I was so big that I took up the almost the entire width of it.  Two normal sized people could pass each other without coming into contact with each other, but not when I was walking down the hallway.  I was absolutely massive.

One day when my daughter was about 16, I realised that if I was lucky enough to still be here, I was going to be alone.  It had been the plan for a long time that when she was finished highschool here in Australia, she was going to go and spend some time with family in the US.  Kind of like our own private exchange program.  I realised that I was going to end up alone, sitting on the couch at home (when I wasn’t working) with no life.  I didn’t want to be alone.  I realised for the first time in a very long time, that I was finally open to putting myself back on the market romantically.  Once again though, I felt that I needed to lose weight to do that.  I have never felt comfortable being in a relationship as an overweight person.  I knew that when I was a healthy weight I was attractive to the opposite sex and for so many years I didn’t want to be.  I had had a failed relationship and I didn’t want to do that again.  It took me a long time to realise that that was why I was never successful all the other times that I had tried to lose weight.  Stupid I know, but true nevertheless.  I have also learned over the years that I need to love myself before I can hope to love another.  Something that a lot of people don’t realise is that being overweight is not really about selfishness or gluttony or whatever other name you want to put on it – it is more often than not about self hate.  There are lots of reasons and quite often people aren’t aware that they even have them, but I guarantee they do.  When I am at a healthy weight, it is because I love myself more than when I am overweight.  So I set about making the changes that I needed to make to lose my weight.  It was time to shed my armour and this time I was finally successful.  It took me about 3 years to lose 100kg and I have pretty much maintained that for the past 4 years or so.

You may think that that is the end of the story.  It’s certainly not.  Yes, I am now a healthy weight, but I still need to work at it every day.  My life today is absolutely amazing compared to what it was 7 years ago and I am so grateful that I finally found what I call my “Why Power”.  I have learned so much over my journey and I continue to learn every single day.  I have made it my mission in life now to try to help others to find their Why Power and to pass on what I learn to help people just like me who struggle with their weight to create healthier, happier lives just like I have done.  I hope that you find my ramblings of help to your on your journey.  We CAN do whatever we tell ourselves we can…….I have definitely proved that!

Until next time, take care and just remember that you CAN change your story……one meal at a time, one day at a time, one step at a time.

Shari

xoxo

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