Because Of A Promise

For this weekend's challenge, I'm supposed to blog about why I will never give up my dream of achieving a healthy weight and lifestyle.

in 1998, my mother was dying from lung cancer. She had been heavy for a lot of years prior to getting sick but when she got cancer, she finally got to the weight she wanted. She made me promise that I wouldn't put off getting healthy and losing weight until I was sick and dying like she did and she said that as incentive, she would pay for me to go to Weight Watchers until she died, which she did on November 23, 1998.

When I joined Weight Watchers in August 1998, I weighed 264 pounds (my heaviest). It took me a long time to lose weight and it was only after my mum died that I started to have some success on the scale. However, it took me until 2003 to lose 70 pounds and then in 2003, I went back to school and quit Weight Watchers because it was an expense that I thought could be cut as I'd been following the program since 1998 and I knew I could do it on my own.

Except that I didn't. In the spring of 2004, I took up running but over the summer, I was suffering with a lot of knee pain so I stopped running but my knees still ached. And, then in the fall of 2004, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and regained 40 of the 70 that I had lost due to not being able to exercise due to the never ending pain and due to me trying to eat the pain away.

In September 2007, I joined SparkPeople and since then with the help of my SparkFriends, I've lost 46 pounds, which I'm proud of despite how long it's taken me.

I still have about 40 pounds to lose until I reach my goal weight and I will never give up because of the promise I made to my mum in 1998.