Health Goals

~June 12th 2013~

  I kinda thought I would do something different, I want to track my health goals to help keep me on track. I am using the term health goals because for me this is very much about health and not so much weight loss.

  I think I will start off with a brief overview of my health over the years. I was always a healthy and very active child. I swam, played soccer, hiked, camped, and of course played with all my siblings. I had always been kinda small for my age though. when I got a bit older(junior high school) I was playing soccer and do cross country running.

  Grade 6 is when I starting to have some problems randomly when I would do activities I would have asthma attacks. This continued through all my schooling, but I still kept active I just struggled a bit more. With my asthma also came allergic reactions to sprays( things such as axe products), I would stop breathing and my throat and mouth would swell up. I carried a epi-pen with me at all times. I had a lot of reactions  some weeks probable four times. This made me a much more nervous person and a lot less out going. I was lucky though I had good friends and Wesley supporting me though, and through the physical education program at my high school I found a safe spot to stay active.

  In 9th grade I got mono, and I was extremely sick with it. So I was off physical activity for awhile but I never really got better. Afterwards I was very sickly I caught everything, I was sick at least two times a month. This went on up until the last year. I have spoken to people that also had mono and said the same thing, that they were always sick after it. I am not sure if this really a medical thing or not though.

  In my grade 11 and 12 year was when I gained my weight. I gained it very rapidly and could not  stop it.  The summer before Grade 12 I  bought my prom dress in a size 6 and by prom it had to be let out a lot before it did not fit at all. I was always tired and some days just couldn't get out of bed. My doctor did blood work and found I had very low iron and potassium, I took supplements and they helped some  I had more energy.

  The problem was I still gained more weight. It is important to point out that I took our grade 11 and 12   physical education classes. In these we spent a lot of time weight training and playing different sports but we also did kinesiology classes that covered first and a little bit of second year university courses. So I have a pretty good background knowledge. So even then I knew something was wrong that I was growing stronger through being active but still gaining fat. I would like to mention how lucky I was  to be a part of that class, we had about 20ish students but it was a safe place for me. The guys in there all knew about my allergies and took good care of me and stood up for me when there was any problems in the locker rooms. It was without a doubt one of my favourite classes, I had one of the best teachers, and a great class. They always made me feel safe and we had so much fun. I play sports pretty rough and they always did too, so it was wonderful!

After I graduated and moved for school my weight continued to creep up and I started to get more weird symptoms. I was always hungry, I craved greasy and sugaring foods all the time. Which as a child I really did not eat much of. If I worked out even lightly I got sick, fever and nausea, so I stopped working out. After  about a year of that my symptoms got even worse, I started getting terrible headaches that nothing would stop, I had a spasming intestine, dizziness, chest pains, and a lot of body numbness.

  After awhile from trial and error I cut out gluten from my diet within a week I stopped getting these symptoms and lost 10 pounds. If I know eat anything with gluten they all come back. So there is no doubt in my mind it was the gluten, though I am going through the process of being tested. I have been completely gluten free for five months now, except for one finally test(that was not good for me). I am finally absorbing nutrients and have energy.

 So it is now time to start putting myself back together. I have already starting eating much better and going for walks, but I want to eat much better still and start running again. I think its a great idea to track my progress on here. It's possible I might help someone else re-find themselves.


Here are two pictures from early high school when I was 100-105 pounds. Which seems quite low but I am only five feet tall.

I used my prom dress as a marker so I am using a picture from it, though the dress covers a lot you can still see a big difference. Also that is Wesley with me.

And here is a more recent photo though its still maybe two years old, but It shows me at my biggest. The photo is with my good friend Leah at FerryLand Newfoundland.

My next post will be on my actual goals and how I plan to achieve them.