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

Fight Back, Giving Up Is Not Allowed

I recently learned what it feels like to take one step forward and three steps back. It feels crummy and tragically without hope but there is always hope even when its a bit harder to find its there waiting for you to find it. Going back where you been, having to walk the same scary road is not something that is pleasurable in the least but It does not have to be a nightmare. The longer you spend walking towards your goals the sweeter it will be when you get there. Your heartbeat will guide you with it's rhythm and when you get knocked down your ragged breath will be the strength you feel when you need the encouragement to get back up. Trust me on that I have been knocked down lots of times but that sore ragged breath well Its a pleasurable and necessary pain that says, hey your still alive get up and try again. It's demanding and bless it I love it for not allowing me to give up.

So here is what happened first, the first major setback I have had on my getting happy and healthy journey. I woke up one morning with a terrible pain in my shoulder, shrugging it off I got through my exercise thinking I just had pulled it a little like what happens with my hamstrings so I rubbed some analgesic cream on it and prepared to deal with it, thinking it was not going to last long and the more I worked it the less the pain would be. One month went by, two months and I noticed the pain was getting worse and I could not move my arm but to a certain point no matter what I tried. Ever the anxious but stubborn person I was I had done decided I was going to fix this myself so when I went to the doctor for a regular check up and he asked me do you have any complaints? Of course I should have said yes my shoulder is killing me has been for the last couple of months but also of course as a stubborn and anxious person for fear of unnecessary surgery I kept a smile on my face and said oh I feel great. I felt horrible, I had spent the last few days before my doctor's appt mostly sleeping in bed and not getting up but to get my parents medicines ready and to do early morning tweeting well because twitter well its one of my obsessions. Another month passed and the pain was all the time and my arm was less mobile, I was starting to think that I had actually broken my shoulder, fractured a piece in it I was so convinced because I had never had a pain that bad or left me not able to move it all the way. Well I went to the doctor and he said that he would give me xrays but he pretty well knew I had a frozen shoulder, he gave me a shot in his office and he turned out to be right. Within ten minutes my arm still hurt but It was mobile, It got better with exercises over the next month but this was a major setback that resulted in me gaining a bit of weight, not sure how much cause I don't use a scale but I was bigger than before and I was going to have to work to be where I was once happy and healthy feeling. I looked at the challenge as an exciting game of get back to the happy Jeannie, nothing was going to get me down this time, nothing was going to stand in my way! Right? ....Wrong.

About a week later or maybe a few days short of a week I had my second major setback that is a bit gross and to this day I have no idea how or why it happens. It still happens but its manageable now, thank goodness. Let me see if I can explain. The first time I noticed it was the smell, It was a sick smell kind of like vomit or sweat that had been lingering for years on a stinky piece of cheese and it was coming from under my breast. I raised my breast up before I took my daily shower that evening and seen red blotches on my skin that had gooey sticky stuff and my bra I took off which was a pearl white color was now marked with green spots where the band goes under the bra to cup the breast. Then as I washed I noticed the burning, to the touch of anything it felt like an intense sunburn. Stubborn Jeannie had learned from before and immediately went to the doctor and well spent almost a year trying out new things to get rid of the fungus that now was on my body, the fungus loved me my doctor said and gave me lots of creams, lotions, antibiotics, ectr. but nothing worked. In fact halfway through treatments It got worse and I would bleed anytime I did exercise hard enough to jolt my breast. I said in another part of my story that my breast are the biggest part of me and well its hard to not get them to jiggle. I had blood on my clothes now and became very depressed. It seemed like my body was fighting me and more importantly I felt like it was winning.

Giving up is something I never really did, I have stopped what I have started before but that was because I no longer had the desire to continue. That is what I believe to just be a human trait that some of us has which it to change our minds frequently. To me giving up is when you desire to keep going but you feel that its not going to happen no matter what you do so you may as well not try. I sat there with Ice Cream in my spoon watching the internet feeling gloomy for a few weeks but just like I have a mind that frequently changes its mind I woke up one morning and looked at my skin deciding to try something simpler which was to use rags to catch the sweat when I exercised suggested by my doctor early on but I balked the idea saying I was way too sore to have anything touch me. Well again stubborn Jeannie learned her doctor was indeed right, yes I do believe he should get a medal for putting up with me, ha ha but he never complains. The rags worked wonders and my skin was healing and starting to clear up. Whenever I get a break out I use them alone without anything else and It clears up by the next day or two. At this point my exercise had to start over completely, I did not have the stamina to go for two hours a day because with the back to back setbacks of the frozen shoulder and fungus problem I had to start slowly with only thirty minutes now but I was taking a step forward on my journey again, I had gave up and I was not happy so I changed my mind. I realize I just needed a mental break and time to figure out what I had to do to be happy again.

Today I am exercising at over an hour a day, with faith I will reach my goal of 2 hours but I am happy where I am at now. I know that in the next moment I may experience another setback and will not let it get me down, will work to find a way to fix it not by myself but with help from others no matter how much stubborn Jeannie wants to refuse it and do things all by herself she does know sometimes Its best to accept help and say thank you, and she is starting to see that maybe that was the whole purpose for every setback the small and the big ones she has been through. There is small setbacks in every part of the story if you search for them you will see them. Not a day really goes by that something does not turn out the way I would have wanted or wished it to but that is what I believe life is all about, learning and to learn you have to grow. Take the lessons, cherish them because they will help you become happy, show you things about yourself you never knew before. Until you have became so weak you will never know what your true strength feels like. Next part of the story is going to be about Inspiration, coming soon.

*smile time* a favorite quote of mine from Mahatma Gandhi

"Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strength. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength."