I have been doing SO GOOD the past few weeks.

So why do I still get discouraged when I look at myself?

I’m doing things I never thought possible, inspiring people to chase their dreams and working towards this goal i’ve had since I was 5 years old… but I still find myself feeling hopeless.

What it all boils down to, is that insatiable dream killing notion that I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Those words appear like a billboard behind my treadmill and as much as I try to out run them I can always feel them catching up to me.

It’s poison.

Whenever I’m at an all time high, the slightest reminder of my shortcomings can trip me up and have me second guessing myself.

Have I lost enough weight?

Am I finally normal?

How long will it be until someone sees the kid behind the fat? 

I feel like I’m getting there, slowly but surely. Right now I am stuck in this dreadful second act trying my hardest to get to my happy ending.

And that is why I am at the gym everyday. because the harder I work, the faster I get towards my goals. 

No matter how badly this sucks sometimes, no matter how loud the voices of doubt become, I am not giving up.

I will finish this.

I’m gonna prove everyone wrong

& for once, someone will see the kid behind the fat.

THE HOME VIDEO

Hours, days, weeks went by and I didn’t hear anything back from Biggest Loser  

So I naturally forgot about it.

At the cattle call (pun intended) we were told that if the show was interested in you, you would get a same day call back.

I waited

& waited

& waited 

and no one called me.

So I just assumed they forgot about me and I moved on.

Then, on one epic spring morning, I got a phone call from someone at casting. 

“Hey, I remember you did that funny rap for your interview. Would you mind making a video and sending it to us?”

I was so surprised that they even remembered me. I later found out that I was one of the few, if not only, finalist who made it to california without getting a same day call back at a casting call. 

I think someone at casting told me this, or maybe it’s just something I feel it to be true but 

THE ONLY REASON I MADE TO CALIFORNIA WAS BECAUSE OF MY HOME VIDEO.

(I’m gonna quickly digress so I can show you this video. I’m super embarrassed of it, but if it got me there, I can’t be too mad at it right? Ok, So here it is… no making fun) 

After they saw my home video, BIGGEST LOSER started talking to me every single week! Every email asking for more and more information. I kept thinking 

“they must like me, why would they need to know so much about me?”

I knew that the deadline would be in the beginning of May. If I didn’t hear anything positive by May 9th, then I knew it was all over. All the high hopes and dreams I had for this show would be gone forever and I would forever doomed to a life of mediocrity.

It was on may 6th that I got the call. 

I remember exactly where I was when I found out. I was in a supermarket buying snacks for a friends party. I truthfully don’t remember anything that was said other than “You’re going to California!” 

Everything else was a blur. I was so excited at that moment. I thought

THIS IS IT!

This is my moment!

My life has just officially changed forever.

Let me preface this by saying that If I wrote about every aspect of my Biggest Loser experience it would be a hundred pages long! So I’m gonna try to sum everything up. If you have any questions about BL please let me know and I’ll try to answer them the best I can. 

THE CASTING CALL

After yesterdays gym fiasco, I felt totally run down and drained. When I woke up today I figured out why:

I’M SICK

(insert sarcastic cheer)

Seriously, I’m mad ill. 

& I’ll admit, I can be a little dramatic when I’m sick. 

For instance, at this very moment, i’m reclining on a mountain of pillows with tissues logged up my nostrils. I’m drinking water by the sea load along with copious amounts of tomato basil soup. The blinds are shut and I have Eric Whitacre playing on repeat. 

Like I said, dramatic. 

But as I sat laughing at my own ridiculousness, I came across serval websites that talk about OVER doing it in the gym. I was curious about this because I felt as though maybe I had been over doing it this past week. I was pushing myself nearly to death on the treadmill only to end up sick in bed.

Now this could be just a coincidence, maybe I got something from a costumer at work or came in contact with a disease carrying monkey.

Or maybe my body just needs a break.

For now I’m just gonna take it easy, and give my body the rest it deserves, but once I’m a hundred precent again, you better believe i’m going hard!  

#beastmode

So I went to the doctors today.

Actually, let me start that over

Today was the first time I saw a doctor since being a casting finalist for The Biggest Loser. 

Yeah, that’s more dramatic now isn’t it?

The week that I spent in Southern California seems like such a blur now. There so much that i’ll never remember & there’s so much that i’ll never forget. 

I’ll never remember all the names of the wonderful people from casting who took such great care of me that week.

I’ll never remember how I wasted hours upon hours sequestered in my West Lake Village hotel room. 

& I’ll never remember how I found the strength to overcome the loneliness that intoxicated every breath I took that week. 

But I will always remember the medical appointments!

if only because that’s all I did there!

I would wake up, shower and rush downstairs to a rented space in the Four Seasons hotel to begin hours of medical testing. Then I would go back to my room, fast for hours and do it all over again. 

The next day, I would wake up, shower and rush downstairs to the white eight passenger van with the giant BL sign taped to the side door. I would endure the L.A. traffic in complete silence (as the potential candidates we’re not allowed to talk to each other) and arrive promptly in Beverly Hills for even more medical testing with Dr. Huizenga. 

I’ve been tested for everything imaginable! And very rarely, if ever, do I leave a doctors office with good news. 

So, as I was driving to my doctors appointment this morning, I was bombarded with flashbacks so bright that I had to squint! Every needle that was stuck inside of me, every cotton swab that dried my blood, every cup that I pissed in, appeared before me like gimmicks of a 3D movie. That filtered orangey smell of the California Health & Longevity Institute filled my nostrils so intently that I actually stumbled for breath. 

If you can’t see the picture i’m attempting to paint, just trust when I say that I was FREAKING OUT.

I’ve experienced it before, where the residual anxiety of my failed Biggest Loser incident will resurrect like an old ghost set out to haunt me. I’ve gotten pretty good at just ignoring it, but every now and then, it’ll show up just to remind me of my inadequacies and of the life altering opportunity I almost had.

Sitting in my car in front of the doctors office, I sincerely debated on not going in at all. 

But once again, I gazed down at the inscribed love letter my past self wrote on my wrist. 

BE BRAVE. 

So with all the strength I could muster, I got out of my car in walked into my doctors office. 

THUS BEGINNING THAT GREATEST DOCTORS VISIT I’VE EVER HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!

NEVER

EVER

EVER 

have I heard a doctor tell me i’m doing everything right! That my weight loss is an inspiration to them and that they were sincerely proud of me!

but all of that happened today. (:

The after taste of my Biggest Loser rejection will always be bitter, but I can not allow the failures of my past to discourage my fight for a better future. I have done the impossible 4 times this week alone and I’ve never felt better about myself. 2011 sucked so hard! But it’s a new year and I’m doing exactly what I’m suppose to do! 

A teacher in my high school had a great quote that went something like: 

“If you always look in your rare view mirror you are going to crash you car. Keep your eyes ahead of you, focus on the task at hand and venture boldly into your future.”

I used to hate going to see my doctor, but today my doctor told me that she wants to see me every three months just to keep track of my weight loss, and for the first time in my entire life, I can not wait to walk back into that doctor’s office. 

#bebrave

It’s Saturday morning and It’s the end of a very amazing week for me. I started this blog, I made a few life changes and I have been in beast mode at the gym…

…well that last one might be a fib.

I was doing really well earlier this week when I was working short shifts or had days off. But for the past two days I’ve been working ALL DAY LONG. I’ve had to cancel so many dates with the treadmill that I’ll have to bring her flowers the next time I go to the gym!

It’s been rough.

It’s gonna take time for me to figure out how to squeeze in workouts when I work.

So in a grand attempt to be proactive, I’ve decided that i will spend my entire lunch break walking. I work at a pretty large mall in Florida so walking the entire hour won’t be a problem.

I just have to do something! I can’t waste all the hard work I’ve done. I have dreams to go after and mountains to move! & I won’t let a nine hour shift get in the way of that.

The closer I get to my goals, the more I want them! I’m so close now! I can’t get lazy! I can’t give in to excuses.

I just have to keep moving.

#sharkmode

In a mad search for bottled water and unsalted pistachios, I went to the Walgreens down the street from my house. While walking past makeup displays and Martin Luther King greeting cards, I saw a setup for OSCEOLA KOWBOY tee shirts and hoodies.

Now, I know this doesn’t mean anything to you, but as a proud graduate of Osceola High School, I was thrilled to see Walgreens supporting the home team! 

I’ve actually never been able to rock OHS swag before. Truthfully I could never seem to fit into any of the hoodies when I was in high school (I barely fitted into the 3x shirts!) 

So just for tits and giggles, I thought I would look for the biggest sized hoodie they had. And there, glowing from the back of the rack was the one, 2X!

Most of my adult shopping life has been confined to the Big & Tall section of depleted department stores. It’s become a sad routine for me to hide my unsightly rolls in the comfort of 3 or even 4X tee shirts.

So looking at that blue & gold 2x pullover literally made me gulp like a nervous Bugs Bunny.

Fitting into a 2x would be impossible.

So I thought…. 

It turns out that the impossible isn’t so impossible lately.

(:

Go Kowboys!

It’s difficult to say when I became fascinated with the word “BRAVE.”

Being sent home from Biggest Loser created a domino effect in my life. Everything seemed to unravel at once. 

By August of 2011, I was struggling with severe depression.

For me the hardest part of the day was always in the morning. All the things that were bothering me, all the hurt that I diligently tried to sweep under the rug, would always find me in the morning. In that same place between dream and awake, between consciousness and unconsciousness, my heart took advantage of my lowered defense and forced me to deal with the emotions I never wanted to face. By the time I woke up, I hardly ever wanted to leave my bed. 

It was an eerie time in my life. 

I didn’t feel like myself.

Sometimes I still don’t.

My a-ha moment came sometime in September. I realized that sitting around feeling sorry for myself wasn’t helping me at all. I was completely miserable, yet through that pain I decided to hold on to HOPE with every fiber of my being. That though my heart was breaking, a day would come that would make all of the hurt worth it. 

I think convincing myself that my pain would serve some grand cosmic significance was the only way I got through that depression. 

So on September 16th 2011, I went to a fairly classy tattoo parlor in the mall where I work. With nothing holding me back, I gave 60 dollars to a petite, graffitied covered brunette. In return she carved the phrase “Be brave” on my left wrist. 

On the day I got permanently imprinted, I would say I was more depressed than I’d ever been. But it’s something I wanted to do for my future self.  

For the days I felt like I couldn’t get out of bed, 

for the days that required me to face hidden insecurities,

embrace frightening new experiences, 

or open my heart up to future bruises, 

I would always have that reminder on my wrist,

BE BRAVE.

See what I had to learn the hard way, is that ‘Be brave” simply means to block out all the voices in your head that tell you not to. If your pursuit is pure and noble and genuine, then there’s nothing to think about. JUST DO IT! Because more often then not, the worst-case-scenario that you’ve constructed in your head WILL NOT HAPPEN. And on the off chance that it does, it will not be the catastrophe you have made it out to be.  

If you have a dream, go after it! Life will beat you up every now and then, but it’s from that colossal ass whooping that you develop the character you need to be successful.

The scars that I acquired in 2011 have never found a way to heal completely. It’s like a disability I learn to live with. In fact, till this very day, I carry my fears, anxieties and insecurities in my back pocket. I keep them with me always because they are the core of who I am. And if wearing my heart on my sleeve means that it might get dirty or broken, then so be it! Anything is better than hiding underneath the covers from some hypothetical threat that i’ve made up in my mind.  

Opening yourself up to every God given opportunity without the fear of disappointment is nearly impossible! But if you hold on to hope and try your very hardest to be brave, you will find that a light will turn on inside of you that will never turn off. And from that internal light, you will shine brighter than you’ve ever imagined! You will wear greatness like a cape and nothing will be impossible for you. 

…It’s difficult to say when I became fascinated with the word “BRAVE.” 

I think it’s when I realized that bravery, like joy or love, is an essential part to the human experience. And that often, bravery is the sole ingredient needed to make your life legendary.