MAKING IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE

Shelli Johnson shares how she made a commitment to herself to save her health.

- SHELLI JOHNSON

That single question started my final weight-loss journey at age 39. For over 20 years, I’d been on what I call the diet-go-round, jumping from one diet to the next, hoping this next one would be the answer. It never was. I always lost the weight, sometimes 100 pounds at a time, but then I’d always gain it back again in short order after I stopped following the diet. During those decades, I also struggled with eating disorders, primarily bulimia and binge eating. At my heaviest, I weighed 304 pounds and wore a size 26.

I wrote that question in my journal because, after all those years of dieting and learning about nutrition, memorizing calorie counts, measuring food, and eliminating entire food groups, I still could never keep the weight off. I knew there had to be something else going on, and I was determined to figure out what it was.

I knew I needed to heal my relationship with food and also with myself. I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin so I stayed home a lot, hid away in my room, and didn’t much feel like I was truly living my life. I didn’t want to be seen, didn’t want to have my picture taken, didn’t want to risk stepping out of my comfort zone to go after what mattered to me. I was also having health problems with pain in my lower joints (ankles, knees, and hips), breathing hard when I went up a single flight of stairs, and was dangerously close to becoming diabetic. And so, out of sheer desperation and because I didn’t know what else to do, I made a commitment to myself to save my own life.