Surprise! I’m here!
I feel like I need to reintroduce myself after my
absence. I’m actually so devastated that
I all but abandoned my blog for a month: I think you’ll find, however, that I
was somewhat justified.
Firstly, though, happy new year!! I wish you all the good
things in the universe for 2017.
Realistically, it’s not like 2017 could be any worse than 2016 (touch
wood), so here’s to exciting new adventures in an exciting new year!
December 2016, possibly the worst month of the year for me, was
a real eye-opener. After everything that
went down, I’ve realised that life is far too short to have New Year’s
resolutions. I decided that there really
is no point in only making changes at the beginning of the year: change has to
happen all the time. You constantly have
to adapt to life and its challenges, or you’re going to get left behind.
My eye-opener came in the form of my health. What?
But Melissa, you lift weights nearly every day of the week! You’re super healthy! Well... it started
at the end of the second week of December – my stomach. I would eat or drink something (anything) and
about 5 minutes later, I’d be in the bathroom.
Every time I ate, my stomach would clench itself up into a tight ball
and I felt nauseous for hours afterwards.
The cramps were excruciating.
In the first week that I had it, I planned on going to the
doctor on the Wednesday morning, but by Tuesday night, it cleared up. Assuming that whatever bug I had caught had
flushed itself out of my system, I didn’t go to the doctor. Big mistake.
That Friday, the bug was back with a vengeance, to the extent
that I would drink a glass of water and you could hear it being flushed
through my system to be almost immediately expelled. I was permanently hungry, dehydrated and
physically exhausted. I could barely
stay awake past 9:00pm, never mind train!
I had started a few posts leading up to Christmas, but I just could not
find the energy to do anything that required my spine to be in an upright
position (apart from work – work was super busy, which couldn’t have helped
either).
I went to the doctor on the Tuesday before Christmas. He gave me a probiotic and asked for a sample
(a very traumatising experience). What’s
important to note here is that my doctor believes mostly in mild medicines
(like not antibiotics but also not homeopathy, if that makes sense). So when he phoned me on Friday afternoon and
gave me an antibiotic, I knew something absolutely horrific was going on inside
my gut. On the brightside, however, I did
not have to go for a scope, because my mother suffers from ulcerative colitis
and my symptoms were identical to those of UC.
The antibiotic cleared the “gogga”, as my doctor called it
(I’ve been going to him since I was 7 months old; he’s probably never going to
see me as an adult), but the effects ruined my body. I had lost close to 4kg in the 2 weeks that I
had been so ill and a large portion of my strength, of which I was particularly
proud. I was ordered to stay away from
dairy until the infection cleared, but my body adapted to the lack of dairy
instantly and now I bloat instantly if I have ice cream or anything full
fat.
And then I went on holiday.
It rained about 90% of the holiday, but it was a chance to catch my
breath and regain control of my body. I
still wasn’t eating dairy and I just rested.
I tried going to gym twice, but I probably sweated off any muscle I
hoped to gain and also Virgin Active Ballito has pretty much one of every kind
of machine. One?! I didn’t take my laptop with me on holiday
because I know the kind of pressure I put on myself for my blog posts was not
what I needed at that time.
Obviously being on holiday, I took photos in my swimming
costume. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t
pleased that I had baby abs on display, but it was by far outweighed by my
disappointment when I saw how thin my arms and legs had become.
I know I sound like a whiney little bitch moaning about
losing weight, when I endured Christmas lunch jokes about “passing on the bug”
(although nobody was interested after I had to leave early to go home to use
the bathroom). The thing about my weight
is that it is a very sensitive subject for me because I used to be a
scale-watcher. I weighed myself every
single morning, completely naked before any food. I was obsessed with the numbers on the scale
decreasing every day. My goal weight up
to 2012 was (a very unhealthy) 48 – 50kg.
When I started lifting, I battled with the scale for a long
time because the idea of the numbers increasing scared the crap out of me. It took a while, but eventually my new
obsession became the power I felt with lifting heavier and heavier. It was only last year that I realised I was
no longer weighing myself in the mornings anymore because who cares about the
scale when you’re asking grown men if they’re done with the weights you want to
use???
 |
| Left: 57kg Right: 53kg |
I was going to post this photo on my Instagram this week,
since I’d posted a photo about my Day 1 to Beach Abs. Honestly, as amazing as my abs look in the
photo I took on holiday, I’m not happy with my body. I’ve realised that I feel more empowered by
what my body can do than by how it looks.
The only reason I’m not happy with my body is that I know that it has
been traumatised by my illness and that I need to take better care of it.
I’ve grown up a lot in the past few years and I’ve made some
horrible mistakes when it comes to both my body and how I treated other people
for how they looked. My perception of
health had always been “skinny = good; fat = bad”, as society has programmed us,
and I deeply regret all of those mistakes.
When I still worked at my previous job, I would literally starve myself
the whole day and only have a Coke Zero for lunch, because fat was bad. Thank God for Julian – even though he never
forced me to lift – or I would never have self-corrected the way I did. I shudder to think of how much worse my
health would have been by now.
I’m not going to rattle off a list of resolutions for 2017 to
you. I’m not saying don’t set goals; I’m
saying don’t wait for the new year, or the new month, or the new week. Do it now.
My vision for 2017, therefore, is this:
2017 is going to be a year of health: physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s going to be the year plans are made and committed to whole-heartedly. It’s going to be the year where I make myself a priority to ensure that I am in the best condition possible in order to help others who need it. 2017 is going to be a year of growth and happiness.
I know that you didn’t really sign up to read about my
digestive problems, but I hope that the message behind my story inspires you to
live your best life from now on (if you’re not already). I hope your 2017 is full of love, happiness
and all the light in the universe.
I look forward to an exciting year of growing my blog and
helping people, regardless if it’s by helping them accept themselves in this
post or just how to contour. I feel like
after last year that justcallmemuffins
will definitely incorporate healthy living posts this year, even though beauty
is my first love.
What would you like to see more of this year? What can I do to make this more enjoyable for
you? Please let me know on any of my
social platforms! Don't forget to follow me on them too!
Until next time ♡♡♡