Category: Image

Yep. I’m gonna talk about it: sex. I know we’re not supposed to. I know that we are all supposed to assume we are having the same amount of healthy sex and not ask other people about it. If you’ve got young kids, it’s assumed you probably aren’t having any. Married more than 10 years? You’ve definitely decreased to holidays and birthdays. Unless it’s at brunch with the ladies, we just lie and say everything is normal right? Right? Too bad. We’re gonna talk about because I don’t think it gets talked about enough. I made sure to discuss this post with my hubby before sharing any of this so he would feel respected. FYI.

When I was morbidly obese, Dan and I did the deed our usual 1-2 times a week. I always thought that was pretty healthy and took pride in that. We’ve ebbed and flowed throughout time, but I never thought we were having much trouble in this department. This works out to about…..over 13 years of marriage……..carry the 1……probably a thousand times or more. I’ve always thought that when it comes down to it: sex is the real litmus for the quality of your relationship. I’m obviously talking to the long term relationship and married people in the house. The 3 plus years folks. I thought I had sex figured out in my 20s. I thought I had it figured out when we were 10 years in. I assumed we had nearly peaked now in our mid 30s. But can I just tell you: all of my Top 5 Performances have been rewritten in the last month, all in my old body.

Rewind. When Dan and I were first dating (circa 2004 when everyone rocked a yellow Livestrong silicone arm band, Green Day hit #1 with American Idiot, and Facebook had just begun just to give you some reference) we didn’t have a ton of experience and figured it out like everyone else at that age. I already had some body issues even then. Dan has always been shy and we kind of stumbled through the whole thing together. Nobody teaches you how to treat each other, talk to each other, make each other feel loved and wanted. You’re just supposed to figure it out. But what if you don’t get it right? A lot of people don’t. This is the time in life when a lot 20 somethings learn to replace sex with attention and love because we don’t actually know what love is or should feel like. Now, I’ve been partnered with Dan since 2004. I knew then that he was my mate. But when did we learn to love each other properly? Much much much later. In some ways we are still learning.

We got married in 2006 still in that weird space of being in love but not really knowing what it meant. When we got married we thought we knew what love was. Now when I look back, I laugh. We didn’t have a freaking clue. We had sex because you’re supposed to although neither of us felt very loved or wanted or really enjoyed it all that much. It was ok. I was so uncomfortable with my body by this time that I didn’t really matter what Dan said. My inner voices were louder. When you’re not attractive to yourself, who could be attracted to you? Who could love you when you can’t love yourself?

I know! I’ve read that quote a bajillion times! “You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself first.” I thought I loved myself. I have always liked my personality. I have one of those smiles that makes you want to talk to me. I’m smart and sassy and fiery. I don’t have a problem speaking my mind. I can command a room of adults or five year olds and get them to do what I want them to do. These were all things I loved about myself. But I didn’t love my body. I didn’t love the way I looked. Downward spiral………..then instead of fixing my body to help fix my marriage and sex life, I just got worse.

I have always found love to be conditional. There are people in your life that are supposed to love you no matter what. Through my childhood and up to college I had love ‘run out’ with family and best friends. People would just decide they didn’t like something about me and walk away. Slowly I didn’t make as many friends, learned to keep people at a distance and I had trouble accepting love from anyone. I didn’t understand unconditional love until I had it with Dan. Dan said he loved me 2 weeks after we went on our first date. I truly believed him for the first time last month. It wasn’t that he didn’t mean it. It wasn’t that he didn’t say it. It wasn’t that he didn’t DO IT. It was that I couldn’t accept it.

Our marriage was on a repeat loop from 2006 – 2012. Some mediocre sex, some fighting, lots of eating, boring weekends, dreams of better things but never changing. I still remember a knock down drag out fight we had where we were arguing that neither of us actually felt loved by the other person. It broke my heart. It breaks my heart to think about now. That’s when I made my ultimatum that would change both our whole lives and eventually our sex life.

We moved to Denver in 2012 and there was an immediate change in our marriage. We were both much happier and able to connect with each other more in and outside the bedroom. As we grew in confidence individually, our walls started to come down. I started changing a lot. Over 5 years, I lost 160 pounds, changed my beliefs, changed my career, my personality blossomed even more. The more my confidence grew, the more sex we had. The more I wanted to share myself with him and connect with him. And let me just say, when you’re morbidly obese, sex isn’t great. Things don’t fit how they are supposed to fit. You’re not as close (literally!) because there’s several layers of fat between you. While our sex was loving and exciting, it wasn’t movie sex. If any morbidly obese person could feel the difference in what sex can be like when you’re fit and thin, EVERYONE would do it now. Today. If you’re still searching for a real reason to lose weight, improving your sex life is a great reason.

Soon after hitting my goal weight and the compliments and excitement taper off, so did our new exciting sex. We eventually settled back where we are comfortable. 1-2 times a week. Oh crap did we miss last weekend? Better put it on the to do list……. (pun intended) I slowly became more uncomfortable with my thin body. Even though I’d lost the weight, I still hadn’t solved all my body issues. We had another LOUD fight where both of us admitted we didn’t feel loved, wanted or desired even though we were having sex.

And then I set the due date of my surgery.

Setting the date of my surgery gave me a hard line. Either I’m gonna learn to love myself and figure this out for good, or I don’t deserve the surgery. I’ve always had a secret from Dan (of which I will not share here) that I thought would make me unlovable. I thought I’d keep the secret for when I wanted his love to end. I thought maybe keeping my secret was the ace in my pocket. If he ever decided to leave, which he would, he’d have a reason why. I could decide when he’d walk away.

My friend Gary has a way to ask you just the right question to turn your world upside down. We were having one of our crying sessions (one or both of us always cries I swear) and we were talking about my inability to accept love and feel loved. He asked me “Why are you so afraid Dan’s love will run out?” That’s when I knew. I was worried if Dan really knew everything, he’d walk away. This kept a barrier between us and also kept me from loving myself. Two weeks before the surgery we had an event that exposed my secret. I didn’t mean to tell him but I knew it was my chance. I had to know if I was still lovable, no secrets. Would his love actually be unconditional?

Having Dan know everything about me, even my most secret of secrets was hard. I felt vulnerable and scared but I also never expected to feel so weightless. Dan accepted my secret without conditions. Exposing myself to him so completely and have him love me in return was one of the best moments of my life. Turns out Dan has some secrets too. I thought we loved each other when we said “I do” but didn’t even know how yet. I thought we loved each other when we celebrated 10 years. But honestly, I think we only just figured it out. We’ve only now been completely ourselves. Unless you can love and expose every part of yourself to your partner, you’re not really loving them or yourself.

I have had the best sex of my life in the last month. I’m talking about movie, lasts for hours, is that the sun coming up? sex and enjoyed every second. Dan and I have been together over 1000 times and in some ways it feels brand new. We can’t get enough of each other and it’s like we’re making up for all the lost time. Every few years I think I’m having the best sex of my life, and then we get just get better at our marriage and the whole cycle starts again. I’m not sure it gets better than this but I hope to write you a new post in a few years about how wrong I was now. And by the way, this all happened in my old saggy skin body that I thought I’d never love. Turns out, that was all on the inside and the outside didn’t matter so much.

Now I feel loved and wanted by Dan all the time. (Ok, 98% of the time) Since Dan’s love language is Words of Affirmation, it’s so easy for me to love him in return now. I can’t wait to tell him how much I love and want him. Now I’m on 6 weeks rest. (2 down 4 to go…..) and not having sex has been in the top three things that are hard. I have joked with a lot of women about how hard it is to not have sex. Most don’t understand it. I’ve heard “A six week break would be my dream” and “What a blessing” and “You’re so lucky.” It makes me sad. I know where they are. They feel unloved and unwanted. They don’t really love themselves and have confidence issues. They can’t be fully exposed. But I gotta tell you, it’s the best I’ve ever felt. It’s the most loved I ever felt. This right now, is the best life I’ve ever lived.

Alright, so last week’s post stirred up a lot of excitement!  Even though I tried to word it really carefully, I still feel like people didn’t quite get it.  People are calling me, approaching me at work, to say “Love yourself!”

To be clear: I FREAKING LOVE MYSELF.  Sometimes I worry I love myself too much! 🙂 I absolutely love my body’s abilities and all the things that I can do.  I think I’m beautiful and overall pretty freaking hot.  I wear a small in everything and size 2 jeans.  Men notice when I change my hair and often hold doors for me.  I have killer arms and even the guys are jealous of my calves.  I’ve worked hard for every single thing I love about my body.  I’ve molded it from something so far away from what you see now.

99% of people I pass on the street or at my job, wouldn’t even know what I got going on underneath all these clothes.  In clothes, I think I feel more confident more often of the time than most women.  The days where nothing fits right and I just feel fat, don’t happen that often.  (Of course, that makes a difference when you wear yoga pants to work !) I know that I’m beautiful and have noting to be ashamed of or hate about my body.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t.

I spent nearly two and a half decades of my life wishing my body were different and punishing it in all sorts of ways.  I over ate, under ate.  I starved and binged.  I even thought cutting might be the answer, for like a day, because turns out that hurts! (Not funny…..but true) I wasn’t sure how to fix myself or my body so I tried anything I thought would work.  And then I just gave up.

Now take that person and give her a ‘new’ body.  Stick her inside a body that can run for miles, makes guys turn their heads, can deadlift 205 and gets dirty looks from women if I’m showing any skin at all.  But this new body, it’s not something you’ve seen in a magazine.  It’s not a body that any one would expect at age 33.  It’s not a body anyone would choose. Oh yeah, and make her try to figure it all out in a fraction of the time she spent hating it.

That’s where I am.  I’m in the gray area. I changed soooooooo much about my body and life that I hated.  I’ve done some many things that I’ve only ever dreamed about!  I am freaking incredible.  But……7,000,000 sit ups later: I still can’t wear a bikini without stares.  I just want to be real for all my peeps out there.  Weight loss isn’t going to be everything you’ve ever dreamed.  Not only will it be harder than anything you’ve ever done, it doesn’t get easier when you stop losing weight. Maybe it will someday?  Maybe I will wear a bikini someday, but right now I still don’t WANT to.  I still don’t WANT to let people see me and have to deal with reactions.

I recently got a new client who is an 80 year old female.  She is so strong for her age and told me the secret is to never stop moving.  She can still do squats and takes the stairs to the gym, never the elevator.  Today she was complaining about her ‘old lady saggies’ getting in the way. She pulled up her shirt to reveal some loose skin from age.  I quickly pulled mine up too to show her mine was actually way worse. While it comforted her in the moment, and we had a quick joke about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it later. She had no idea and was shocked.

I know that it’s hard to understand but there’s a huge difference between accepting my body and loving my body. During my transformation, I had to learn to forgive myself for being so overweight and treating myself so poorly.  I feel like I’m starting to get to acceptance of what I did to my body by being so morbidly obese.  I don’t know that I’ll ever love my body the way that it is.  Maybe one day.

This post is going to be a little sad but also very very honest.

I’ve been at my goal weight for a few years now.  I’m very happy with almost every aspect of my new lifestyle and continue to be able to motivate myself towards new goals.  Even though there are so many things I love about my body now, I still kinda hate it.   I’m hoping to feel ‘meh’ about it in the near future but….if I had to choose…..I still have to go with hate.

To be very clear: This isn’t a ‘poor Kim’ post.  I’m just trying to be real for all my other extreme weight loss peeps out there.  I 100% love what my body can do and I’d still lose the weight every single time.  But….I don’t 100% love the way my body looks.  I know that no one does.  Everyone that we envy or think is perfect still has issues, but when you’ve been through a transformation like me, everyone is shocked to know you still have some confidence problems.

Extreme weight loss leaves behind extreme results but also extreme skin.  I knew after losing 160 lbs, my body would look much different but I never knew what to expect.  The fear of my end result actually stood in the way of my weight loss for a long time.  And now that I’ve been on the other side for so long, it’s weird that it’s still literally hanging around.  And I’m really. freaking. sick of it.

I went through a lot of phases about my extra skin.  Phase 1: At first, I was honestly ok with it.  I loved to watch the show Extreme Weight Loss while I was on my journey. 

(One of my favorite contestants: Bruce Pitcher lost 181 lbs! I still follow him on social media) If they hit their goal weight in 9 months, the contestants on the show would then qualify for skin surgery.  Then at the 12 month reveal, you’d see them post surgery and at their goal weight.  Once I’d completed my transformation, it had been 15 months.  I could not have imagined having surgery that soon.  Changing that much and so quickly is quite shocking.  I’m not sure surgery would have been mentally healthy for me at that point.  It didn’t really bother me at first.  I was so happy to be buying small clothes, it didn’t matter to me that I needed several layers to ‘hold everything in’.

Phase Two: Grossed out anger? Is that an emotion? I’m not sure there’s an emoji for that……… Once I had settled in to my new body,  I found my hanging skin just plain gross.  I had worked so freaking hard, just to carry all this around? That didn’t seem fair at all.  Now I can hold a 2 minute plank but have 4 inches of skin hanging down? Now I can fit into the tiniest shorts in the store, but even I don’t want to see my thighs.

Phase 3: Over it. It has now been long enough that my skin is what it is.  It’s not getting better. So before you email me a lotion to try, a new skin firming technique, or your sister’s friend Suzie’s number because she once lost 20 pounds…….Tried it.  Tried It. and Oh yeah…. Tried it.   Even though my age was in my favor, there’s some things skin can’t recover from.  Lots of my body looks normal, and thankfully those are most of the normally exposed parts.

On the other hand, there are parts that just ain’t coming back. Maybe someday I’ll be bold enough to post a photo.  But there’s no miracle cream that will raise my stomach above my pubic bone.  I’ve been medically cleared for surgery that insurance will pay for but I still hesitate.

It’s only within the last 6 months that I feel good about getting rid of the skin.  I’ve been dying to get rid of it for a long time, but I knew it would change me.  It was important to me that I wait until it wouldn’t.  If I had gotten it done when I was in my first phase, it definitely would have added an additional barrier to my mental and emotional acceptance of my transformation.  I don’t know how that would have changed my final outcome.  If I had gotten my surgery during my second phase, it would have been a huge relief.  Forcing myself to keep the skin through my second phase, taught me even more lessons.

Once the confidence and shock of extreme weight loss wears off, you’re left in almost a mourning for change.  You get addicted to the change.  When you stop changing, people stop noticing.  They stop complimenting.  They stop being shocked.  It’s hard to let that go and find the confidence in yourself.  It’s hard to learn to fill your confidence meter with self love and thoughts instead of depending on others.  This is something I’m still working on.  My therapist (whom I’ve gone to……once……because self care is still something I’m working on) asked me, “Do you ever think you’ll love your body?” and I had to say no. Not how it currently looks.  So then she asked, “Do you ever think you’ll be neutral or ok about your body?” and I could say yes. On the love to hate meter of my body image I’m closer to love than I’ve ever been but I’m still not that far from hate.

I know that I’ll be ready for my surgery in the near future because I can envision being ok with my body how it is currently.  I know that skin surgery wouldn’t change me now.  Until then,  I’m going to work on continuing to fill my confidence bank from within not the outside.

 

I’ve crossed many finish lines in my day, both literal and metaphorical.  But there’s one race that even though I’ve already won it, I’ll never cross the finish line.  I might not ever see it in the distance or even know what that finish line looks like.

I’m talking about health of course.  I will forever chase and have to re-evaluate what healthy means to me.  I now know that food and the balance of life and activity will follow me till the end of time.  Sometimes people ask: What keeps you motivated? How do you keep going?

While there is a definite ebb and flow to motivation (even mine) there has never been a time when I felt “off the health wagon”.  I’ve made poor choices here and there but I’ve never thrown in the towel.  Why? Because it’s only now that I realize what was actually happening to the inside of my body while I was morbidly obese.  Some of you have read on this site in the past that I never thought it was all that bad.  Now that I’m on the other side, IT WAS THAT BAD.  I got winded and tired from walking the dog.  I woke up most mornings with ‘sugar yack’ or ‘carb cloud’ and I thought it was normal.

Definitions ala Kim:
Sugar Yack: That feeling in the back of your throat that causes you to clear it over and over and over because you ate too much sugar the day before.  Or it seems like your saliva it’s self is part sugar?

Carb Cloud: Much like a beer hangover, it causes you to feel sluggish and just can’t quite get going during the day, until you’ve had enough carbs again.  I know you’ve been here!

These used to be daily occurrences to me.  I didn’t realize that most people don’t spend their morning getting over their diet from the day before and breaking through their carb cloud.  I didn’t even realize that I only felt like that BECAUSE of my food intake.  I didn’t even know what I SHOULD feel like. It’s those feelings that keep my food in check.   Some of you laughed out loud or knew exactly what I’m talking about with “sugar yack” and ‘carb cloud’ and I can tell you, it’s not supposed to be like that.  Now I fuel my body to get it to do the things I want it to do.

I stay motivated because whether I like to admit it or not, I was staring an early death in the face.  I wrote last week about choices if you haven’t checked it out, and I guess this week is too.  It’s not one choice.  It’s a million.  Every choice I make either helps me feel proud and motivated or sad and defeated.  I choose proud.  I choose to do things that others can’t because that’s who I want to be.  That’s what I want for myself.  I know I won’t always look like this.  I know I won’t always be able to deadlift over 200 pounds.  I know I won’t have biceps forever and if we ever have a kid, things are likely to drastically change.  However, this is who I am today, and I’m pretty proud of her and I know she will never go back to where we used to be.  When you’ve been there, you know.  You know there is nothing that would make you want to go backwards.  I honestly don’t worry that I’ll ever be over 200 pounds again.  The difference I feel now makes that ghost scarier than any horror movie I’ve ever seen.