The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth
I’m going to tell you the truth. It’s about time.
I want to tell you the story of my past year. Really tell you what has been going on. I’ve been sugar coating it because I could not deal with the ugliness of my reality.
About a year ago I was extremely overweight, so overweight that I was pre-diabetic, I had high blood pressure, sleep apnea and a host of other health problems. I was so out of shape that it was hard for me to walk around a store, sometimes it was difficult getting from a sitting position to a standing position.
I’m embarrassed to talk about this, still. I did not ever show any full-body pictures of myself on this blog because I was so ashamed of the way I looked.
To add to the health problems that I had, I was depressed. I have Bipolar Disorder and have suffered on and off with depression for most of my adult life, for the past twenty years. I was severely depressed last year. I had tried every medication combination out there. I had been in and out of therapy for decades.
And to add to all of this, I was unemployed and not writing and I am a writer and teacher by profession. I was completely capable of getting a good job since I have a Master’s from an Ivy League school. But I was so depressed and sick I couldn’t do anything right.
I was drowning.
About a year ago, I realized that I had to change my life. Not just my weight, not just my job situation, and not just my dying spirit. I had to do an overhaul. I had to completely change myself or I was on my way to an early death.
I didn’t think about it. I didn’t plan it out, at all. I just started doing stuff. I started with meditating for half an hour every day and writing every single day. I did not let a day go by where I did not meditate and write.
This started my transformation. I didn’t realize it then, but I am mind, body, and soul. I could not just focus on one of these things, I had to work on all three to fully help myself. I had been planning six months before to get Bariatric surgery, which is weight loss surgery that shrinks your stomach so you eat less.
For a long time, I did not want to do this surgery, until the day I did it I had my doubts. Who wants to cut off part of their stomach? I’ll tell you who, people like me who were dying. But I knew this surgery was not the easy way out, I knew the failure rate of this surgery as well. People lose weight then gain it all back.
I refused to go through all this trouble and not succeed. This was all intuitive, by the way. I did not consciously plan all this out. But somewhere deep inside me, I knew that if I didn’t change my mind, body, and spirit together, nothing would change.
So after meditating and writing for a couple of months, my depression literally disappeared. I mean I have been fighting this demon for decades and it was gone, just like that. I now meditate for an hour a day. It was like a magic trick. I had the surgery on October 30th of 2018. I did every single thing by the book. I ate exactly what they told me to eat. I ate the exact amount of protein, drank eight glasses of water, and ate the exact right amount of food and vitamins.
If I was finally going to go through with this thing, if I was going to do this thing, I was going to do it right or it wasn’t worth it. I started walking. I literally started walking for five minutes a day. I built that up over the past 9 months to one-hour for ideally five days a week.
I jumped and I instead of falling I flew.
I have lost a little over a hundred pounds. I’m very proud of myself. I am also very embarrassed and ashamed of the person that I had become. It is very difficult for me to talk about this so openly. That is why I only hinted at it all this time.
I have a ways to go with my weight loss journey. I have a ways to go with my professional journey, but I have almost finished two books that I plan on publishing in the next few months. I have a great job and plan on teaching in college again in the fall. And I have no idea if I'm enlightened yet, but that is the goal when I figure out what that actually means.
How did I do all of this? There is only one word that comes to mind. Discipline. I’m a Sikh. The word ‘Sikh’ actually means disciple. One who practices discipline. I’m not a religious person, but I am a Sikh if that makes any sense.
Doing what I had to do, every minute of every day, is what got me to this point. I am happy, not depressed, I am professionally successful, and getting to my goal weight. I’m no longer diabetic and I am off all blood pressure medication.
My story is about what can be done when we think about the whole self. Who are we? We are mind, body, and soul. I started to fall asleep during mediation for the last couple of weeks. I started to get my first symptoms of depression, which for me are all associated with fatigue. I was so tired I couldn’t walk and I started to eat badly.
I realized it was all because I was not really meditating. I realized it is all connected. My writing started to get tiresome and old. We are all connected and all parts of us are connected.
I’m telling you this not only because I’m proud of what I have achieved, but also because I am humbled by what I had become. I failed to take care of my body, with depression I wasn’t even showering daily. I failed to take care of my mind by not writing and teaching. And finally, I let my soul suffer by not feeding it with meditation, nature, music, and art.
I can dance again.
I fixed the whole machine of my being. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be, and a lot easier than I thought it would be. If that makes any sense.
nina