ANGIE MAY – BALANCE ON MY MACRO JOURNEY

TESTIMONIAL FROM COACH ANGIE MAY–

How I Found Balance in My Macro Journey…

Can we all agree that life in a nutshell can throw us some pretty mean curveballs? Most of the time, you are completely unprepared for it. It comes out of nowhere, or sometimes the foundation was laid and we just didn’t realize it. I lived most of my childhood, teens and young adult life insecure and seeking acceptance. Sound familiar? Insecurity can stem from so many different places. It’s like an octopus but with 10-20-30 legs instead of the standard 8. I have found on my journey, and it has been a long one, that sometimes we have to do the hard work to find out the source of our darkness before we can really heal. I have found that healing, whether physical, emotional or spiritual happens from the inside out if we want it to stand the test of time. The irony in that is that social media and culture screams at us that if we just look like we have it all together; if we have the perfect body, the perfect marriage, the perfect kids, the perfect vacations and most definitely the perfect parenting style then what is on the inside really doesn’t matter. That’s just clutter that no one really wants to see or hear about; much like that 1 room everyone has in their house that is the “catch all” room. We just shove all of our junk in there, close the door and pretend like it doesn’t exist.

At 19, I was as broken as a young girl could be. I was in a very dark place and things seemed to be spinning out of control by the minute. I had just broken off my engagement and said good bye to the only identity I had known. It was messy and ugly on so many levels. Most of the time, when life seems completely out of control, we look for something that we can control and that is what I did. Most of my childhood I had been made fun of for being over-weight. At the vulnerable place I found myself, I couldn’t control much of what was going on in my life, but I could control what I ate and how much I exercised. As I began to see the pounds melt away, the more motivated I was to stay the course. Something was finally going right, or so it seemed. I was taking obscene amounts of caffeine and ephedra to keep up with my day to day workouts and just life in general and no one could convince me that I was on an unhealthy path both physically and spiritually. Emotionally, I was a mess and everything inside of me was jumbled and confused. It was the mirror that was my enemy and my best friend all at the same time and the scale was my measure for success. The thing that I had latched onto for stability in my world, had turned on me.

I have never been addicted to alcohol or drugs or anything else, but I dare to say that my addiction and the addiction that so many others face is one of the hardest battles to fight. It is the only addiction that you have to face every single day, multiple times a day. You can’t use the avoidance method like you would with substance abuse or gambling. No, this is different. You have to go to battle with the very thing that causes the anxiety to stir within you, the very thing that causes fear to rear its ugly head. And that is what I was doing, going to battle. I battled myself and my own darkness, I battled those that loved me, I battled food, I battled the need to be needed and loved in a way that had been stripped from me in an abusive relationship. Every day was a battle until I found myself lying in a hospital bed with doctors running more tests than I care to recall, only to find out that I had idiopathic gastroparesis; aka, partial paralysis of my stomach. To say it was a wakeup call would be a drastic understatement and I knew that I wanted to get better; not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. You know, all those “inside things” that the world tells you to bury. All the clutter that I had been tossing in that “spare room”; I wanted it gone. I wanted to live under the banner of freedom that Christ died to give me. I wanted His grace to wash over me and for me to feel completely clean for the first time in years. The answer for that came in one simple word: Surrender! I had to surrender to the Lordship of Christ in my life and do whatever it took to grasp onto all that He had for me. There was so much that I battled in that time of my life: fear being the primary one. I feared I would never be good enough, I feared I would never find anyone that would love me for me, I feared I would never find my true calling and purpose, and I feared my past would always find me. It was paralyzing at times but God was faithful as He always is. The road has not always been easy but what I have gained from cleaning out my “extra room” that resides in this place called God’s temple is that nothing is rarely what it seems on the outside if that is all you see. My insides are far from pearly white in my own strength and in my own abilities but when Jesus comes in and crashes the party, He cleans house and that is what He did in my life.

So, as I bring this to a close and share with you how macros has been a part of my new journey over the past 2 years, it seems like such a small piece but what I would describe it as is my icing on the cake. Even though I wasn’t battling the day in and day out struggle with restricting or binging, I was looking for answers for my post kiddos body in this diet and that diet and nothing was working for me. I was cooking multiple dinners at night because my youngest is super picky, I couldn’t have carbs and my husband and oldest just wanted to eat normal. “Normal”, what did that even mean? For me, it meant macros. I found balance in eating the things I enjoyed as it fit my macro nutrients designated to me by my coach, and my food was increasing weekly, and the best part was I was getting results. I was seeing body composition changes, the scales were moving (in the right direction) but better than all of that, I wasn’t bound by a diet telling me what I could and couldn’t have anymore. I was enjoying cooking 1 meal at dinner time and eating with my family, I was enjoying date nights again without feeling bound to chicken and broccoli or a salad. It was great! I finally had a healthy grasp on food. Food wasn’t good versus bad, it’s not my friend and it’s not my enemy, it’s just food; fuel for my body.