Tonia

The last several months I have been on quite the journey trying to find myself again. I was a food addict. As in all I ate were foods that were processed, with no flavor, no color, full of sugar, full of fat from eating out and carbs. Ultimately I was a carb addict. In fact, I could have called my pantry “home” because that’s where I gravitated to and was happy. I knew that I had a food addiction problem because of my eating habits and knowing that I couldn’t control myself. I was living a vicious cycle of shoveling in the food which in turn fed my anxiety. Every day while eating something I shouldn’t have been, the thought would go through my head, “I wonder if this is the bite that is going to put me into a stroke this afternoon.” Or, while eating a Bacon Burger from Freddy’s have the thought, “This might be the bite that gives me a heart attack at 42 in front of everyone.” But…..I kept shoveling it in even though I was worried sick that I was killing myself. That’s the really INSANE part of this. The root of my anxiety that triggers panic attacks is the fear of dying and leaving my children behind. I knew that I was out of control. At that point I was my highest weight ever and had finally resigned to the fact that I was just going to be the “big girl” for the rest of my life. I had packed away all of my skinny clothes and had them thrown in the back of the suburban for me to take to Goodwill when I got talking to a friend about a diet she had started the week earlier that had to do with eating clean and becoming lean. Something clicked that day and I was determined to make the changes in my diet to be healthy, to hopefully get rid of my anxious thoughts and to get those bags of skinny clothes back in my closet for a future day.

Here I am without a waist in a picture that will last forever. Yay

DSC_4413p

Over the course of the last several months, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned that I can do hard things. That what once seemed impossible, was possible through a loving Father in Heaven that wanted me to be happy and healthy. I learned more about my body and that it actually needed protein. That was hard to wrap my brain around because I was pretty close to being a vegetarian. Whatever. Let’s call it like it is. I was a carb-itarian. I began eating veggies. A lot of them. I got creative on how to eat them. How to eat lean meats and eggs without disguising them with buns, bacon, cheese