Health for the Unhealthy – Mental Health Awareness

This blog is going to be a little different for the others on our page. I have written and rewritten this post countless times but I feel like this has to be said. For starters, I am Cody Richards and I am one of the contributors here for Heaven in Health. It has taken me years to even acknowledge that, I too, am struggling with mental illness and dependency more specifically a food dependency, depression and anxiety.

When starting our website, and in conversations about content creation I knew immediately I wanted to talk about mental health because it is something I feel like everyone should be aware of but most importantly I am the LAST person to talk to about fitness and exercise. Out of all of my fellow contributors I can say, without a doubt, I am the unhealthiest. I say this because it is something I have struggled with from really childhood into my twenties.

In my childhood, I was a sickly child and was on tons of medicines most specifically for my asthma. Around the fourth grade I was put on a steroid and it caused me to gain about 80 pounds over the course of a year. This is really where a lot of my problems began, I had gone from the tiny blonde headed body, to Pugsley Addams over the course of a year. That was a detriment to my self-confidence because being a child is hard but being a self-conscious, high-pitch voiced fat child is even worse. What hurts the most is that I have almost always loved myself, but what has worn me down over the years is how others have told me that I shouldn’t like myself because of certain traits I possess. This fear and constant negativity I was berated with finally sank in and is something I still struggle with today.

Currently, I am finishing my senior year at Kennesaw State University. I can honestly say college has been the absolute worst place for me to stay healthy. I’m sure you have all heard about the freshman 15. Well I did the freshmen 25, sophomore 30, junior 45, and back down to the senior 20. Yes, the entire time I have been in college I have gained about 120 pounds altogether. Keep in mind, this isn’t hard to do when you eat your feelings, drink sprite as if it were water (It’s not), and come home every afternoon sleep, then binge Netflix until 3 a.m. I know I say this jokingly, but it is incredibly difficult to go out and be a “normal” college student when your social anxiety keeps nagging you about how no one is going to like you, or how you have decided you look terrible and everyone will stare at you, or how you are so stressed about something that has no real significance, or that you’re just so sad that you want to sleep so your mind will stop imploding, or your friend didn’t text you back in an hour and instead of realizing they are at work you convince yourself they hate you and no longer want to be your friend. If you are worn out by reading that last paragraph then congratulations, you feel about 1% of how anxious and exhausted I feel then that happens in real time.

To be fair, I have not always been that bad. The real starting point came the summer before my senior year of high school. During that summer, was convinced I was going to be the most popular guy in school, so I convinced myself to go on a diet so I could reappear come fall as the “it” guy. Well I started my diet, completely without medical supervision and not reading any instructions, just vaguely taking suggestions on a meal plan and maybe going to the gym about 3 times a week. Over the course of the diet I did lose 40 pounds only because I did not eat and gave myself food poisoning twice. Granted, that didn’t matter, I had lost all this weight and in my mind, I was so skinny. That is until I tried on clothes and I was still a XXL. I was crushed, to be frank, I felt the fattest I had ever felt right then and there. For the first time, in my life I felt so ugly. School came around and even though everyone noticed the weight loss and congratulated me I still felt like the fat kid being made fun of. I gave up, I lost all hope in my appearance and just repressed it as much as I could.

In the next coming months, my weight would not even be a thought in my mind because after being diagnosed a year and a half prior, my dad passed away from stage 4 lung cancer. I hate to say it but as much as a loved and respected my father, he and I were never as close and my mother and me. I expected to be able to recover with the help of my mom but I had never once experienced such a deep and painful loss, there was absolutely nothing she could have helped me with. I completely shut down, I internalized every emotion so severely that I became severely depressed. I had no will to live, I had no desire for anything, I wanted to die. The only reason I am alive today is because I was lucky enough to have a friend that became my emotion punching bag, the more I kept fighting, the more they just took my punches and told me I was going to make it.

In the event of trying to compartmentalize all of this depression and anxiety I was feeling, I went back to school three days after my father’s funeral and acted as if nothing was wrong. Continuing my daily activates as if I didn’t go home every single day ant thing about swallowing a jar of pills. To my amazement, my charade fooled everyone so much so they stopped checking on me. Now I really felt alone, I had faked being okay so well that everyone really thought I was fine. In my mind, there was no point in really drawing attention to my internal struggle so I just wore my mask every single day and confided in the only friend I had and I made it through senior year, all I kept saying was in college it will be better.

As I mentioned in the beginning, college was not better. It’s not like I moved hours away from home, but still there was nothing worse for me than to take me from my childhood home where the only reason I got up and was productive was because I had my mom there to make me. In college, no one makes you do anything, no one tells you what to eat, no one tells you to stop eating, no one forces you out of the bed you are on your own and being actually alone in a two-bedroom apartment all day only creates more anxiety and depression. The only things that have saved me in college are my genuine want to go to school, my want to work and truly me being absolutely broke.

As the years progressed though, my motivation has lessened and my anxiety and food dependency has grown. I moved from my first apartment into a town home, where I currently live, alone. It is truly a struggle every single day to leave my house because all I want to do is lay on my couch, drink sprite, and watch Netflix. I hate going out because I know weight is an issue and as much as I try to hide it and over compensate with humor, I still feel like the fat kid that was bullied.

All of this being said, I am now trying to turn a new leaf. I believe everything happens for a reason, I feel like it was meant for me to be a part of this group. I feel like it was meant for me to tell my story and to share with all of you that, in all honesty, being healthy has only put me through hell, both physically and emotionally. I have struggled and continue to struggle because I never looked for help or had a go-to resource available to me on how to eat right, think right and move right. Even in the short time I have been doing research for this website I have already began changing little things in my life so that I can become healthier. I started researching healthier meal recipes and this one has been my absolute favorite.

Finally, just finally being able to write this down and express how I have struggled over the last five years has been a real revelation for me. I am in no way out of the woods with any of my problems, I just feel like it helps being able to express how you feel. You don’t have to be like me and tell the entire world how you feel, all you have to do is tell one person. Just remember, every single day you push through and keep living is a major accomplishment. Don’t let anyone degrade your self-worth, you are incredible. You are a gift!

The only way I know how to close is this quote " It's ok if all you did today was survive.”