Health Patterns Pre-TBI

For those who have just met me, or have been following me for 5 years, you might think I have always had my mind on health and fitness. That is far from the actual story of my life. My memory of physical activity before the age of 27ish is negative. My thoughts about food were all over the place. One thing remained constant until a few years ago, I was uncomfortable with my body as a whole.

My mom lived in Queens NY when I was 3-8, and my dad lived in a village off in the country in Wisconsin. My memory of physical activity when at mom’s was walking… all the damn time… everywhere… As an adult I find it funny, because duh of course we walked everywhere. Have you been to NYC? Why would be drive, ha-ha. My country memory was having to walk what seemed like miles to the park or bike up a hill to school. Also, as an adult I find it funny, because I feel like the length of the whole village is less than a mile.

I do not remember nutrition being a big focus in either household. When I was 7 years old my mom had her first child from her 2nd marriage. When I was 11 years old my dad had his first child from his 2nd marriage. They both had 1-2 more children quickly after their firsts. I was arguably old and responsible, and I remember having a lot of autonomy when it came to my food decisions.

I was the tallest in my class through most of my k-8 grade classes. My core childhood friend group consisted of a few ladies who were/are naturally thin. Between my height and not being naturally thin I gained a poor self-body image at a young age.

I remember some time between 13-15 years old some kind of fat camp type show becoming popular. I felt that I needed to go to a fat camp. I had no desire to workout. I had no food control. I had no knowledge of how to get out of this mess. I was also not validated by adults for how I felt, because they felt I looked fine. I remember being met with things like, “you should not feel that way.” “Things could be worse.” “It’s not that bad.”  While at the same time I was also met with passive aggressive digs from older generations with sayings like, “you would look great if it wasn’t for your pooch,” as they grabbed my stomach fat.

Sophomore year of high school I said enough is enough. That is the year I tried to lose weight. I joined the fall swim team. Man did I get worked!! That was the hardest physical activity I had ever participated in as a child. It kicked my ass, and I am so grateful I stayed with it. The caveat with the swim team was the unhealthy eating habits that paired with it. It was common for me and a few girls to go get a bag of Oreos or other cookies of that serving size after practice. We could and would eat the whole thing of cookies each that evening. We could because of the metabolism that swimming gave us. When the season ended we had a sugar addiction, and I didn’t have the next outlet planned to maintain or improve my metabolism.

In high school and my early college days I tried a few different diet and exercise programs, with little or no success. I did the Special K diet, Tae-Bo, Walk Away the Pounds, Richard Simmons, South Beach Diet and probably a few others that are not coming to mind now. I

I wanted to be thin because my mind said thin meant pretty and being pretty meant acceptance. I had self-sabotaged everything I tried. I feel that is because most things I had tried were not sustainable. Example, it is not sustainable to eat Special K cereal 2 meals a day with little to nothing else.

At the end of my Junior year, I gave up the thought of becoming thin. I had found the party scene was way more fun than caring about my clothing size. So what if I was fluffy, I was having a hell of a time whooping it up.

From the time I started my party life senior year until my TBI I had pretty much the same thought patterns and practices. I felt fat, which meant ugly, which equated to assumption people do not like me. If people do not like me, I do not like people, the world sucks, let’s party.

I had a HUGE addiction to carbs, specifically pasta.  By the end of my party era a typical day would look like this:

·         Press snooze a million times

·         Wake up rushed to get to work

·         Already late stop at my coffee shop to get coffee with shots (yes plural) of espresso in my coffee

·         Also buy some kind of pasta salad

·         Go to work cranky and caffeinated

·         Occasionally go off site and have a bloody mary

·         Eat the pasta salad in the afternoon

·         Have an entrée at a restaurant for dinner, usually consisting of pasta

·         Start drinking, those days fireball shots were given out for free several times a night in addition to the other beverages

·         Oh and I would drink up to 2 liters of Diet Coke a day, occasionally more

·         And yes, that’s right… I would smoke 1-2 packs of cigarettes a day

For fitness in the era, I would do things like the 30-day ab challenge. I also was introduced to and completed one time the Run Double Couch 2 5k training app. I always felt fat and gave medium effort to try not to get fatter, but I never really figured out the secret in this season of life.

The toxic lifestyle I created over the years is what ultimately led to my TBI. I said it then and believe it now, my brain injury was divine intervention. I was headed down a terrible path in life, one that would inevitably be unescapable. I was presented with a choice with that injury, I could go back to what I knew that lead to devastation, or I could make the uncomfortable choice and make some MAJOR lifestyle adjustments.

Honestly with the state of mind I was in post brain injury, I wanted to go back to what I knew. It was having my normal vices withheld from me that started the journey that led me to the behavioral unit. Although extremely uncomfortable, and arguably against my will at the time. I am beyond grateful for the way things unfolded on my healing journey.

Like the finances section of this site, I think I am going to share this portion of my life chronologically. It will help me understand the thought patterns that lead me to the next step along the way. It will also give you some perspective of how my thoughts changed over time about different nutrition and fitness choices.