David Smith’s Healthy Outlets

We all need an outlet and one of my main outlets was food. I turned to it so many times that my weight was maxed out around 650 pounds. I knew I had to turn to something else. Even before I started a healthy way with Reshape, my uncle suggested that I start journaling as a way to get my emotions out. I laughed it off at first because I thought only little girls wrote in their diary. It was now a year later and I was starting at the beginning of my weight loss, having a hard time. I didn’t want to binge and ruin my progress like I had in the past. I finally did what my uncle suggested, bought a notebook and wrote on the first page, “How I saved my life, my journal”. I wrote in it mostly at night before bed, but if something came up I wrote it down immediately.  My journal got me through some tough times as well as some good times. It’s good to thumb through it and remember how hard it was and realize how far along I have come. I didn’t have to worry about sitting down at a hockey game, because now I could fit in the seat. I didn’t have to worry about not fitting in the front seat of a car. I didn’t have to worry about ever going to a truck stop to get weighed again. If I binged, I now realized the triggers involved and took myself out of that situation. I was amazed someone opened the door for me and smiled. I was laughed at in the parking lot and a long line of people stared and gawked at me while I walked by, but I had still left the house and I was so proud. I have so many memories and experiences that I can recall forever. I now have a healthy outlet through journaling and a remembrance of how I saved my life.