♪ It's time for another ♪ ♪ Super uncomfortable
video about my weight ♪ (laughing) It's weird. Hey everybody, my name's Anna OBrien AKA Glitter + Lasers. And this is part two of, I don't know how many there
will be maybe a million, about part two of my health journey. First and foremost, I
just wanna say thank you. The first video I shared about this topic, I was so scared to post it, like so incredibly scared, I
had like 18 people watch it. And I was like, I don't know. I feel like everybody
is gonna be real mad. And the opposite happens. So many of you were just like
so incredibly supportive. And I just, I really appreciate that because it's made continuing easier. I was gonna continue either way, don't think that I am giving up yet, but it was just nice to not have to have that extra stress, of feeling like the community that I love and care for was upset with me. They might be upset
with me after this video because I'm having another
tough conversation. Yay. Today, I wanna talk about accountability. It's I think the root
of all of my problems and might be part of the
root of yours, I don't know. So I made a decision
that every time I start one of these videos,
I'm gonna kind of start with a disclaimer. I am not here to tell you
how to manage your health, that is not my job. I am not a dietician, I am not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist,
I'm not a physical trainer. I do not have the resources
or the knowledge about you to tell you how to improve your health. So I am not here to do that. What I am here to do, is to encourage you to
have a deeper connection with your body, your mind, and your soul, so that you can make the
best choices for your health. I am also here to encourage you to look at health differently. We typically look at health
as a definition of your body. And let me tell you, I would not be here having
this discussion today, if I did not first work
on my mental abilities, second work on my social
structures around me, third, work on my financial situation so that I could fourth, come to grips with what was happening to my body and make the right decisions. So for anyone who thinks that
this is just about my body, you have missed the memo and you probably didn't
listen anyway, so who cares? So in short, I don't wanna tell you how
to live a healthy life. That's not my job, but I am gonna encourage
you to take the effort, to listen a little bit more to your body and see what you can learn from it. And that's another thing, I'm never gonna be
angry about where I was, because I think life has a journey and there are so many things
I learned in that body, that to hate it seems cruel
and seems extremely ungrateful. So as many of you know, I just got back from a
hiking adventure in Utah, Southern Utah, predominantly, and I will be having another
blog a little bit more on that 'cause there's some stories from that trip that are pretty intense,
but I learned a lot. And I remember thinking as
I was walking on the trails, like, what is different? Like if I could sum up in one word, what was different about
me in the last three months than the previous three months? What was it? And one word kept popping in my brain and that word was accountability. And the reason that word kept popping up is because I always gave myself an excuse to not be accountable previously. And it was either, life is too hard. Things are too stressful, I'm
doing this thing really great. So why do I have to be accountable to also do this thing really great? Like look over there, stop paying attention to
what I'm not doing over here. So one of the things I had started to do, and it's something I actually wrote about in my book a couple of years ago, which is funny because
I should know better, was this concept of a gold distraction. And it's, something that
I feel a lot of us do, which is, instead of
having this small group of manageable goals, which we
hyper focus on and achieve, we have like 35 million goals, so that even when we are
shirking on something that may be very, very important, we are somehow achieving another goal. (laughs) So we can be like,
Oh, I ate crappy food. I sat around the house all
day, but you know what? I had a goal to practice more self care and that was all self care. And I found myself doing
that, giving myself an excuse. It was too hard, or I was taking
a rest, or I needed a break or whatever it would be. And I was never holding myself accountable of the decisions I made, or the effects that came
from the decisions I made. I started to like, think about
like, how did this start? How did I stop being accountable? Because people who knew me before my diagnosis and everything knew me as a very active person. I was always plus-sized by the way. But I was doing spin classes and running and all of this other
stuff, I was also smaller, I'm not gonna pretend about that. And there's, you can go
back to the old end times in my videos and we'll
see that I was smaller. I realized that when things got tough, I would always find
something to be grateful for, the silver lining. And I'd also always find a
way that I wasn't sucking, like to just be really honest, to like, okay, everything in my
life is falling to crap, but at least I'm doing this, right? And to some extent that that kept my mental clarity a little bit
better, but to many extents, it was detrimental to me and
not just physically, okay. I had relationships with people
that were extremely toxic, and I knew they were toxic, but I always found that silver lining and I never held them accountable, and I never acknowledged my feelings, and was accountable for the
situations I put myself in that made me feel like crap. Like I did that a lot and I'll be honest, I am still learning how to put up walls with people that are not good for me. And I think my first step in kind of working towards all of this was removing that toxicity from my life because I was not holding
any of these people accountable to be good friends, and I was giving
everything to other people and not taking care of myself. I have a dear, dear friend that I love. She goes by Color Me Courtney online. And she always says oxygen mask first. And literally for the past three years, while also being newly
diagnosed with a condition, I was my last priority and it's kind of sad. It's like, I'm a crier, if you
haven't figured that out yet. But it's kind of sad how
little I cared about myself to care so much for people that
would never reciprocate it. So I literally gave so much. And when I looked around
at what I had from it, just in terms of like relationships, I'm not talking things here people I'm talking like support and friendship. I had invested poorly, I had
invested so poor, poorly. And at first I blamed those people, but then I realized, I
had like a part in this. I let this go on, I didn't
stand up for things. I let people treat me that way. And I had to take responsibility, hold myself accountable and
make change in my own life. And so, that was like the first step where accountability changed me. And it took me like six months to get all of the crap out of my life. And I remember the last
person I cut out of my life was super difficult because that person was extremely charismatic and had a lot of amazing
things about them. But at the end of the day, they
were a crappy person for me, maybe have great relationships
with other people, but being in my life was not good. At first, I was like really devastated and mourned this loss of a relationship, but like within a week, the toxic energy that
has like been over me, like drained out and all
of a sudden I felt capable. I don't even know how to like explain it any other way than I
felt extremely capable. Like things that seemed
so hard and so difficult felt achievable all of a sudden. And I think it's because I no longer was feeding my energy off, I was no longer siphoning
so much of myself off to another person who never refueled me. That I actually, for the
first time in my life have the energy to actually
like, take care of me. It feels hard for me to say, but, I'm gonna say it,
this year is about me. Maybe that sounds heartless. But I haven't given this
much energy to myself in such a long time,
that it needs to happen. I gotta make up for all those years, that I took all of my energy
and gifted it to other people. Some who deserved it and remain
amazing people in my life And some who took it, used it, wasted it and nothing good came of it. And so now, my heart is a
little bit more guarded, which I'm okay with. And I am really thinking about my needs. And so I went on this trip, right? And the reason I went on this hiking trip, just to back up a little bit is because I realized that every time something good happened in my life, I would celebrate it with food. And every time something
bad happened in my life, I would celebrate it with food. And every time I was stressed out, I would deal with it with food. Like it became this pattern
of, Oh, I feel an emotion. I will eat something not good for me. So it became this weird cycle where I couldn't separate
my emotions from eating. And it's not that I
particularly ate a ton of food. It's that I ate really bad
food because all of the things that I would eat when I was
trying to tie to my emotions were foods that were, what we
would call, celebratory foods. So things like cake, fried
foods, stuff like that. So, I wasn't ever able to
separate fueling something away from food, I lost that ability. So I set myself a goal and I said, when I achieved this goal,
I'm gonna celebrate it. But I was like, how am
I gonna celebrate it? I've always celebrated with food. And then this opportunity
came to travel for a work trip to Utah, and I said, I'm gonna go hiking. And it was the worst time ever, I will talk more about
this in the blog about it, but I injured my knee
before it, it was the worst, but I still did it. And I felt so proud of
just that small change. And, I started to reflect
when I was out there hiking about all the small changes
that added up to where I am now. And there will be so
many more small changes, and each one of them has
come from being accountable of how my actions affect my health, and even in some cases, the
health of those around me and how I have to take responsibility. I look at small things like, instead of meeting friends for food, changing that, to meeting
friends for physical activity, like hiking or going on walks. I look at it like I haven't
had a drink for since July 4th. And even before that, I drank maybe twice during
the last three months. So deciding, alcohol just makes me eat and do things that I don't like, so it's just not an
option for me right now. And that's just me holding
myself accountable again, your choices, maybe entirely
different than this. What I've seen from all
of these small choices is I'm starting to uncover
what makes me happy. 'Cause I spent so much time
making everybody else happy that now I'm focusing on
holding myself accountable, and my emotions accountable and expressing and reacting
to them appropriately. I'm starting to see, I
like very different things than I thought I did. And it's not that I didn't
like what I was doing before, It's just, if anything, I was more playing into
a system than I am now. I think what's really hard too. And I'm gonna address this
'cause I've just been also thinking a lot about this and I'm sorry if this is jumbled thoughts guys, but it's something that's
been on my head a lot. Like on my mind, something
that's been on my mind a lot. When I look at the trolls of the internet and I love, love, love how they talk about how they're just trying
to encourage people to lose weight by shaming them. That shaming that happens on the internet does absolutely no good because it only results
in one of two things, A, someone engaging in totally
toxic health behaviors, which then lead them
to like yo yo dieting, starving themselves, or developing some type
of other disordered eating or it leads to them, rage eating and say, "F you, I'll be as fat as I want." And I'm gonna be very real, that I think part of the reason that I waited
so long to change my health is because I didn't wanna
make those people feel like they had any part in my life. And it is something that literally still bothers me right now, especially when I'm making
all of these changes and I'm having a vast
improvement in my body, is it pisses me off that somewhere, sitting in their mom's
basement, at their computer is a troll, who is taking
credit for something that I am doing out of love for myself. And is saying to themselves,
"I shamed her into changing." It blows my mind and makes me so angry that I even even have to think that way. And that's where I think,
when I say I bought into the fat culture, I get it. I get why fat people are so pissed about all the shit we have to go through. And I'm gonna say shit,
'cause it really is shit. We have to go through from
strangers on the internet that we out of spite, decide to not take care of our bodies. Because it's like, well, I'm gonna eat French fries just 'cause you told me not to. Like, you're not helping, you're just perpetuating
the problem by like, maybe I'm the only one. Maybe I'm the one who's done this, but literally I know that
I've made choices sometimes that are not great, just to spite some asshole
wrote on my comments and that is a weird dynamic
that I don't know how to fix. And I wish that it wasn't a component because I don't think it
would have taken me this long to make and move in this direction, if I didn't have that constant harassment. And actually it's really
hard for me right now. And I'm just gonna, tears again. Is really fricking hard for me right now to read hate comments. Because I think before, when I knew I wasn't
doing the right things, when I was making choices
that I knew deep down inside weren't good choices. It was easier for me
to handle the hate then because it's not like I
was trying to be healthy. I wasn't, and health in the physical form, wasn't a priority at that point. Like I said, I was focusing on mental and emotional and social health. But now when somebody
tells me that I'm lazy or to eat a salad or doubts
what I had for lunch that day, it is so hard, because I have
to turn that part of my brain that wants to be like F you,
I'm gonna go eat some fries. Because I have to keep
focused on what I want. And these people come in and under the guise of caring actually make it so much
more difficult for me to hear the own voice
that lives in my head, the voice that's actually
there to support me. It's funny because they have
no bearing on my self esteem, but they are there because I
am thinking so much about food because I am thinking so
much about activity level, when they come in and they
comment on it, it is hard. It is hard for me to remain focused. It is hard for me to push through and, it's hard for me not to question myself. And so I wish, like, I think part of the reason I felt it's so necessary for me to
be public about all of this. When initially I was
just gonna like magically change my life and not tell anyone. But part of the reason I decided
to come out and talk about and talk through this journey, is because we do not have people out there who talk about their journey in terms of like health and happiness versus terms of weight
and societal acceptance. That is a huge problem. Like there's no other way
to say it, that's a problem, because people build their identities around their bodies because
they have to, to survive. And then we ask them to
question that identity, which might be the first place that they've ever felt
at home in the world is around that identity. We ask them to question
that and hate that, and that is not a fair ask. And even now, as my body is changing and feels a little foreign to me because there's some parts of my body that don't look the same anymore. My body looks different
and feels a little foreign and that's an uncomfortable feeling. So I have to like physically stop myself from not looking at my body
and focusing on my activity. And one thing that has helped is it's helped me continually exercise, because when I feel disconnected
from my body, as it is now, I go and exercise because then
it just forces me to connect. It forces me to move and use this body and basically accept it more. And my body hasn't even changed that much. Oh, it's just, I wish that we hadn't built
size into an identity. I wish that trolls didn't
feel like they got a gold star Every time a fat person went on a diet. I wish that diet culture didn't
exist so that people like me could make health changes without it being this controversial thing. I wish people didn't message
me asking for diet tips now, because that feels weird and uncomfortable and I don't, and won't ever give any. I just wanna be healthy, I
just wanna be free from pain. And however, my body needs to shift and change to support that it's going to, but I'm not gonna sit here
and hate it along the way. And so it's just, it's
all a little bit weird. It's all a little bit confusing and the only thing I can do right now is be accountable to myself, hold myself to the decisions I make, that are helping me move
towards the life that I want and deserve to have, that's it. I wish I could do that,
without all the noise, but again, so that's it guys. I mean, the reality is, is there will always be an
excuse not to do something. There will always be a reason you can't. And the only way that you can is by holding yourself
accountable to the decisions and changes make in your life. That's it. So with that, guys, I'm gonna wrap up this whole long diatribe on accountability. I hope you have an
amazing rest of your day. I'll check you later and peace, My peace sign went off
the screen, there we go.
