Fat & Healthy ( How I Survived Shaming and Learned To Love My Body Again)

Hello, My Name Is....

Nice to meet you, My name is Ada Jean or you can also call me by my nickname Jeannie like most of my friends and family. This is the part of the story where I hold out my hand to grip your hand and we shake on our new found friendship. That is if you don't have a problem with "fat girls" because for most of my life I have always been overweight no matter what I tried or what I gave up. Yes that is not a typo I said most of my life, not too long ago I achieved what most people considered to be a "healthy" weight for me. That could not be farther from the truth. At the lowest weight of my life which was one hundred and fifty pounds, I actually was very unhealthy where it counts most, on the inside. Still a big girl with a 5'2 frame weighing 150 pounds I was gathering encouragement from the people I loved including my doctor (whom I love with all my heart), My family, and friends who knew the social awkward me from my teenage years, to keep going, go the extra mile to achieve that number they wanted me to reach. No one ever actually told me what number I was reaching for only that I had not reached it yet but I was on my way there. Where is there? I don't have all the answers to what I at one time I was seeking but I have all the answers I need. My story is not meant to be guidelines on how to live your life or how to lose weight. I want to take this time you are choosing to share with me to encourage you to find the happiness that YOU define, when you find that true happiness from that place hidden inside of you something amazing happens, you do get healthier. I am not saying you are never going to get ill or always feel happy and healthy but the majority of the time you will feel at peace if you follow your own heart instead of someone else's. I am not saying to ignore the people who love you, sometimes they have very good advice that you may actually enjoy trying. Try new things your heart tells you to try, It will know the good ideas most of the time. Forget failure, the only way to fail is to give up. Forget rules, this is your life and as long as you don't hurt anyone you get to make your own rules for YOUR life. You are your only boss no matter how stubborn those you love may be, oh chances are they will try to convince you otherwise but I must say it again you are the only boss of your life . I learned to define my own "healthy habits", it's still a work in progress and until I pass this world it's going to be forever changing with ups and downs but I do know that whatever I do I am going to do for me. I get up in the morning, watch the sunrise and ask myself what do I want to accomplish today? Then I go out and try my hardest to make that happen. That is what makes me happy, that is what makes me "healthy". At the end of every chapter I am going to share something I hope that makes you smile, it's my number one advice on getting healthy, smile more and worry less. No one can have a stress free life but we can learn to think of things that make us smile and keep them stored in our minds for days that we really need a laugh. So here is one of mine.

Funny Family Story - This is one of those stories that is going to get passed down from generation to generation in our family. My aunt was excited that a new flea market was opening up near where she lived and she went off one Saturday morning in search of some great deals. Well about an hour after she got there she noticed a crowd was gathered around the hill that had a small wooded area but it was more like a park with trees. You could see everything for a pretty good ways back. Anyway curious what people were staring at she tried to see but she was too short and people were blocking her view so she turned to the guy next to her and asked him what was going on. He said a guy had just got through using the bathroom up in the woods and was now wiping with a bunch of leaves. The guy moved so my aunt could see and mortified she seen that "the guy" that had used the bathroom oblivious to the crowd below him was in fact her father, my grandfather. She found another flea market to go to after that.