Today's post is a little different than the usual. The other day, I ran across a video on Youtube that hit me hard. It was made by Strong4Life.com, which is run by Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Inc. Take a look at the video (it's not long) and come back to read my thoughts on it.
I found that video pretty powerful. While I never ended up on the operating table in a hospital, I feel like that video was me. If I would've kept my bad habits up, it would've only been a matter time. My unhealthy eating started from a very young age.
I was always a picky eater when growing up. I would not eat any vegetables and my favorite places to eat were Burger King and McDonalds. When my mom cooked anything with vegetables in it, or anything healthy at all, I would refuse to eat it. She would end up cooking me something different from everyone else. While her heart was in the right place, it was setting a precedence for the rest of my life.
No matter what the situation, I was always the fat kid. Whether it was school, sports, church...anything, I was always the fat kid growing up. It made my life miserable. I absolutely hated being the fat kid. As much as I wanted to play sports, I was horrible at just about everything, and I absolutely dreaded hearing the phrase shirts vs. skins. My weight was a major factor in how I interacted with people. It made me shy. I would never start conversations with people. It would always take me a long time to warm up to people and never had a lot of friends. The friends I did make, though, were always close friends.
By the time I was 25 years old, I was tipping the scale at 272 lbs. As far as I know, that's the highest I had ever been but it's possible that I could've gotten higher. That was a period in my life where I rarely ever stepped on the scale. I remember going to the doctor and he sat me down (just like in the video) and told me I need to lose weight. He told me that I needed to lose at least 60 lbs. My cholesterol was at 200. All my numbers were reaching unhealthy levels. I just blew it off. I thought to myself, "Sure, I'm overweight, but I'm just a big guy. My numbers aren't that bad." These are the things I kept telling myself to make myself feel better even though, deep down, I knew I needed to make a change.
Looking back, I could not believe that I did not take these warnings more serious. I was only 25 years old!!! Had I not made the changes that I made, there's no telling how many different medications I'd be on right now. About the time I developed a lactose intolerance was the time that I felt like I threw in the towel in regards to my weight. I thought that would never be normal and gave my hope of losing weight.
This video shows that the food we feed our children from a very young age can have an impact for the rest of their lives. I can relate to this video. And I know that I want my children to grow up as confident and healthy human beings. Life is hard enough as it is, there is no reason to add another stressor to it. It's my responsibility to help them develop healthy habits at an early age.