We are publishing a motivating excerpt from the book “Chicken Soup for the Soul. Re-create yourself. 101 inspiring stories about fitness, nutrition and self-improvement ”by Eksmo Publishing House.
For several months, I mustered up the courage to go to the doctor. I reached complete despair and almost could not move normally. And so I was sitting in the doctor’s office. My heart sank into my heels. What will they tell me now? Whatever it is, for sure it has something to do with being overweight and I will be advised to get rid of it. In this case, I prepared an ideal excuse: how can I go in for sports when everything hurts?
In the meantime, the doctor wrote something down on the card and then said that I had plantar fasciitis. It does not appear due to obesity, but for other reasons, however, excess weight has complicated the course of the disease.
– It’s very difficult for me to fight extra pounds, – I admitted. – I can’t do the exercises, it hurts!
– How do you eat? Are you monitoring the balance of nutrients? Are you consuming too many calories from drinks?
I assured her that I was trying my best to control the calorie content of the foods. It wasn’t entirely true, but the truth is, I really tried. For two months I even went to consult a nutritionist.
“Try to sign up for the pool,” the doctor advised.
Excuse me, I probably misheard? Does she want me to put on a swimsuit and appear in a public place like that? Don’t even think about it! Yes, in size I resemble a whale, but that does not mean that I have to flop into the water in front of numerous spectators, as do trained marine animals in a water park in Florida. So I left the doctor’s office with a printout of a few simple stretching exercises. There was almost no hope for a cure.
After a few weeks, I was practically unable to get out of bed. My husband and children did everything for me – I could not lift even five kilograms, right there I felt a terrible “lumbago” in my heels. It was necessary to somehow return to life. For this, perhaps, one could forget about embarrassment and awkwardness.
And then one early morning I arrived at the pool. Standing on the edge of it, I probably felt like the killer whales that, in my home state of Oregon, jumped off coastal cliffs into the sea. The only difference was that I struggled to remember what it was like to swim? I haven’t gone into the water for a hundred years. Before diving, I glanced at the rescue instructor sprawled in a plastic chair. It was a thin young boy. Fortunately, he didn’t really care what the big woman on the side was going to do.
In my soul doubts stirred whether he would be able to help me at all if I started to drown.
But when I was already submerged in the water and began to row diligently to the opposite side of the pool, a miracle happened. My overweight body became weightless, and my movements became light and graceful. Of course, I had to spit and take the rap. But I spent so much time almost without movement that now it brought physical joy. I swam for more than half an hour, and all this time I felt tremendous freedom, like in flight. Swimming turned out to be the only way available to me to move independently in space and not feel pain in the soles.
I started going to the pool three times a week. Each time I did more and more swims to the opposite side and back, and in the end it turned out that I swim more than one and a half kilometers in one workout, which lasted about an hour. These swims became vital for me. Cutting along the path, I thought: “But being a killer whale, it turns out, is not so bad. They are very beautiful and graceful creatures. “
Sometimes I found it difficult to force myself to get up early and go to the pool. But after several months of a new life, I noticed that pain in my legs appears less and less often. In general, swimming changed my perception of the world. Now I am much more satisfied with myself, and it is easier for me to give preference to healthy foods. But the most pleasant thing is the readings of the scales. They’re coming down! Now inside of me, seemingly so passive and unsportsmanlike, lives a real strong-minded athlete.
I swim, ride a bike, and work out on a treadmill five times a week. My results are improving: I’m getting faster, farther, stronger. And all this – without pain. Excess weight goes away slowly but surely. I am still far from ideal, but I have already broken free. I am on the right path to health and a good figure.
Lynette Smith