Losing Perspective

I don’t believe that you lose perspective at 99%. I believe you already lost it at 2 or 3%. Not having a clearly defined goal can lead you down a path of lost perspective. I know. I’ve been there.

In January 2007, I made a decision to change my life. I’d lost a friend at 22 to cancer. I’d become aware of the love of God and wanted to change. My husband and I got baptized in a swimming pool one cold evening, and coming up out of the water was a different person. The funny thing about changing your life is that once you make that decision to, things get sticky and hard. And so it was for me.

I quit smoking. I had been smoking for a long time. I replaced the habit with eating and picked up 10kg within a few short months. Then I found out I was pregnant with my 2nd daughter, turned 30 and gave birth to her the day after Christmas. The day I gave birth I was 30kg up from the beginning of that same year.

I lost 8kg with the birth, breastfed till I went back to work at 4 months (lost another 4kg) and then kept eating like I was breastfeeding. There was a crash in the market in 2008 and my salary got less and less for 8 months in a row – most months half of the previous month – until I could no longer live on my salary. My husband had to close 2 businesses and we took a loan with my parents to consolidate our debt. Out of desperation, I started a business. It would be safe to say there was a considerable amount of stress in my life at that time. My husband and I were going through a really difficult time and had even considered divorcing. I remember a span of 2 weeks that we did not say a single word to each other. Not one. At this point we had 2 daughters, our oldest 3 and baby under a year.  

By beginning of 2009, I had already started picking up some of the birth weight I had lost. None of my clothes fitted me and I spent most of my time in pregnancy dresses my mom made me, track pants and my husband’s T-shirts. I was miserable, unhappy and mean.

 I needed to have ID photos taken for some reason, so popped in a local photographic store and had them done. The photographer, a kind guy named Hein, still made a comment that I was quite photogenic and put the photos in a packet for me. In the car, I finally had the courage to look at the photos. My heart sank. I rushed back to my home office where a close friend of mine worked with me. I sat down and looked her in the eyes and asked “I need you to be a good friend. I need you to be totally honest with me, and tell me if I really look like I do in this photo”. I showed her and she responded: “That’s actually a really good photo of you”.

I’m 161cm tall. I’ve only grown 20cm since I was in Grade 6. I have a petite bone structure and wore jeans in size 6-8 up until I quit smoking. At this point I was a size 14 on its limits. I did not know that I was overweight.