I still can’t believe I gained that much weight! Most of my life, I have been fit and healthy. I love doing Yoga, Pilates and going to the gym to lift weights and for cardio. But, a few years ago, as part of a job promotion, I left the city for a small rural town. And that’s when I completely lost myself for 9 whole months!
So What Happened?
It wasn’t the change of leaving my friends, family and home city that made life difficult and caused me to gain weight. In the past, I’ve lived in 4 different cities; two of which were in different countries all together (Hong Kong & Australia). So, I’m very familiar with starting fresh in a new city and with handling culture shock. It was the small town mentality and the overwhelming stress of managing staff that spoke and acted completely inappropriately at work. Then, they complained to HR when I would attempt to address their behaviour. That and the fact that it was too cold to even take my pup pup out to relieve himself.
I Admit I Made Poor Eating Decisions
It was a downhill slide that culminated in making poor food choices over and over again that contributed to both my mental deterioration and physical weight gain. It began at the end of August that year. After driving 10 hours with my 2 cats and dog in the car to this far away land, the next day as I was expected to work right away. The first month wasn’t that bad as I was adjusting to my new surroundings and observing at work. But soon enough, the days got dark sooner and I had to manage a difficult staff.
My anxiety was getting worse as the days and months went by which triggered severe fatigue. To save time and energy, I stopped cooking at home and would eat from the food court and get take out for dinner. Of course, the more I ate out, the more weight gained. I never got around to joining a gym or doing any form of exercise. One of the full timers ended up in the hospital for a month and by December I was working 6 days a week. I knew I was gaining weight but I was too unmotivated to change and just got more and more unhappy.
Auto-Pilot is Not A Good Way to Live
I was basically surviving on auto-pilot. It was work then home and back to work again. Because there isn’t much to do in the small town I hardly went out and never made any close friends. Sometimes I went to bingo at the casino on Sat night with co-workers just to do something but that really was the extent of my social life. The final straw came in the spring when I got bronchitis. I was on the verge of pneumonia but still went into work because we were understaffed. And then my manager showed up unexpectedly and lost it on me. She was ranting on and on, blaming me for everything that went wrong over the past 9 months. I was so sick, barely sleeping from coughing so much, on 3 different medications and simply had had enough.
That week I put in my notice and took my time packing everything back up to move back to Vancouver. Because I had no home, I put all my stuff into storage and was on my mom’s couch for a few months. Once I was back, I got a new gym membership and weighed myself. I had gained 40 pounds of weight during those 9 months and now came the journey to regain my health.
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