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GUEST BLOG: I used to be morbidly obese or Why I started the Girls On The Run serving KCMO
1399 ViewsOne thing I love about my job is that it allows me to meet really amazing people. I met Sabrena Lea, Council Director for Girls on the Run serving Kansas City, MO through another amazing woman and my friend, Sheryl Morgan (who also serves as the President of Girls on the Run serving Kansas City, MO.) I have written before that I am involved in the Let’s Move! Initiative as part of my job and one of the work groups I am part of is helping to coordinate their 5k run in November. (For more info on Girls on the Run, click here!)
When I heard her amazing story about why she was passionate about Girls on the Run and becoming involved in the Let’s Move! Initiative, I asked her to share her inspiring story:
Looking back over the last 20 years, it’s not a mystery how I got to be morbidly obese.
College dinners looked like dorm cafeteria dinner at 4:30 p.m., study snack at McDonalds or Dairy Queen around 7 p.m., and probably a pizza close to 11 p.m. Oh, or maybe Country Kitchen to “study” but mostly to eat biscuits and gravy around midnight. After college, I did decide to diet, even took off some weight, but once I got married, those old unhealthy eating habits emerged. Lots of immediate gratification via fast food and sit down restaurants took over my eating style. Then came the babies, and being pregnant was an even better excuse to eat what I wanted. Not just fast food, but any kind of junk food would do in a pinch.
In August of 2004 my youngest child was born. Throughout my life I’d blamed genetics for my weight issues. However, after 3 kids, all of which were in 10th percentile for weight, I had to surmise something else was the culprit.
Around November of 2004, I realized I needed to change something. (OK, let’s get real for just a second, this wasn’t the first realization, it was just the one that made the most impact, the one where I was one way before and one way after). I was working at the Y with kids of parents who’d dropped them off so they could work out. Watching parents who were dedicated to their fitness day after day inspired me to begin my own fitness journey.
18 months after I started getting fit, I had lost 100 pounds. What I didn’t realize is how my fitness journey would impact my kids. When I started the process, I had a 3-year-old, 1-year-old and newborn. For the first three years of Gracen’s life, she’d had fast food at least twice a week pretty much every meal on the weekend. Our meals were brown back then, consisting of hamburger helper and Texas Toast. (Like I said, it wasn’t hard to figure out how I got so big.) The amazing thing was that as my dietary habits changed, so did my kids’. None of them really miss McDonalds, and we look forward to stopping by one on a road trip. They’ll never know what it was like to eat fast food night after night. And they never really ask for it. Sometimes they’ll want to eat out, of course, and we love to do that, but even then, they prefer water to pop most days. My son will take mandarin oranges over French fries if given the opportunity, and during our meals, they’ll ask me for fruit to go along with our main course.
Besides the food part of this story, there’s also the moving our bodies piece. Yes, we eat fairly well, but I also encourage my kids to MOVE. We spend countless hours at the pool summer after summer. We belong to the Y, which gives them opportunities to stay active. Fitness has become part of our every day life. My kids aren’t “skinny,” and they’re not rock star athletes, but they feel good and can do anything they want without weight getting in their way.
Besides living fit at home, I’ve always had a heart for the community. Throughout my journey I’ve wanted to give back, to inspire people maybe, but really to change people’s lives, to make a difference. One night in August of 2006 a friend of mine mentioned Girls on the Run (GOTR.) I had never heard of it, but listening to her describe it, it sounded like a perfect fit. My new appreciation of fitness combined with my elementary education background, GOTR seemed to be calling my name. I contacted the Girls on the Run national office to get more information. It was a huge time and financial commitment, but one that I wanted to try. I grabbed my Y mommy friends and we fundraised like no ones business. In June of 2007 we became an official Girls on the Run council. That first year we had 19 girls and two teams. This year I’m proud to say that we’ll serve over 600 girls and have nearly 50 teams.
Girls on the Run isn’t just about running. It’s about getting outside of the “girl box.” As a woman, you know what I’m talking about. The concept is equipping girls in 3rd – 5th grade with the tools they need to feel good about themselves, so when they hit those turbulent years, they make good choices and avoid risky behavior. There’s another program for 6th-8th grade girls as well, Girls on Track.
The number one thing I hear from women when they first learn about GOTR is “Where was this program when I was a girl?” My goal is for girls in the metro to no longer feel that way, as they’ve been able to participate in GOTR. We have a saying around GOTR, every girl. . .regardless of race, weight, disability, economic hardship, and any other buzz word that typically gets in the way, EVERY GIRL.
This isn’t a “how to” on losing weight and keeping it off, in all honesty, I don’t really know how to do that. I know that my weight goes up or down depending on what I eat and how much I move.
I hope by sharing my story, I will inspire others to avoid the challenges I have gone through myself.
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