I don’t know if it was an epiphany, or whether it was all the little things that occurred in my life over the past 18 months, that made me say “I’m doing the IsaBody Challenge!”. But today I decided. When I took the first sip of my Cleanse drink in January 2005 I weighed 220 pounds and wore a size 18 pants. In four and a half months I had released 68 pounds and wore a size eight! I was elated! So much so that I celebrated quite frequently! I gained about 8 pounds back, but remained pretty stable. I was surprised when I realized that I had stopped craving the ice cream and pizza that had been the main staples of my diet for I don’t know how many years!
In 2007 I made choices that did not serve me and I chose to stop cleansing, stop drinking the shakes, and stop eating healthfully. My cravings for pizza and ice cream returned, and I gained back most of the weight and became depressed, and in March 2009 I sat in my doctor’s office in tears as I realized that I can’t live like this any more. It was either “not live”, or “do something.” At this time I weighed 203 pounds and wore a size 16. I already had hypothyroidism. My cholesterol was at an all time high, my blood sugar was bordering on high, and I had been diagnosed with insulin resistance. That’s another term for “pre-diabetes.” My blood pressure was also creeping up. As a registered nurse, this made me very uncomfortable. I was 46 years old and heading down a very slipperly slope, following in my father’s footsteps, and his father before him. It was that very day that I decided to integrate Isagenix into my life again.
This time the weight came off more slowly, and I hit plateaus more frequently. But I persevered and followed the 30-day program, and eventually I broke through all the plateaus. That is until recently.
It’s been about six months or so since I released 59 pounds, and I’ve been at a plateau since then. I’ll put a couple pounds on, take a couple pounds off. My weight is stable. I’m quite pleased with my progress and my ability to manage my eating by choosing healthy foods. Until today...
Today I said “enough is enough!” I reminded myself about the journey I have been on from the moment I was born... the decision in 2005 to take a different path with Isagenix. Has my journey been easy? Well, releasing the weight was easy, but the inner transformation has been painful and enlightening and frightening and uncertain and exciting all at once. I was once someone who was very introverted to the point of isolating herself from social connections, someone who was insecure and afraid of “stepping outside the box”, a scared little girl who cried every day of her life because there was nothing else to feel. In the past five years, I took a step at a time, testing the waters, sometimes jumping back two steps for fear of the unknown, for fear of what waited for me in the deep dark waters. At times I remained paralyzed by the fear, running away from possibilities and opportunities. But in the past couple of years I started saying “who cares” and did it anyway. I started looking the fear square in the eye and challenging it - and myself - to move forward, to take risks. It no longer mattered whether I was good at what I was setting out to do, whether I had all the skills to perform at my best, heck, it didn’t even matter whether I knew anything at all about what I was about to do. I just started doing it! And in doing “it” I am becoming a person who I really, really like.
So today I DECIDE to embark on the next part of my journey. As I began to transform my body, I transformed my inner self. And the new “me” is ready to take it to the next level, and complete the transformation. Funny thing... I have always been so good at going the extra mile for someone else, giving my love until my heart ached, going out of my way to make something possible for someone else. Today, I DECIDE that I am worth going the extra mile for myself!
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