HOW 1 WOMAN LEARNED TO CONTROL HER ANXIOUS THOUGHTS — AND LOST 100 INCHES
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When Chay Venrick, 54, decided she wanted to improve her health, she couldn’t see a clear path forward. She was a cardiomyopathy survivor and had been diagnosed with prediabetes. She wasn’t very active, and she didn’t always choose healthy foods. Her excess body weight was affecting her mobility. She knew she needed to make some changes.
“I didn’t want to live the rest of my life the way I had lived previously. I knew I needed to start with my health,” the Denver resident told TODAY.com.
She spotted some roadblocks that were keeping her from living her best life:
- Coming of age in the 80s left her with body dysmorphia: “Body positivity did not exist then. You were either a size 2 Glamazon supermodel or you weren’t.”
- Family members had commented on her looks over the years.
- She had been brainwashed by what she calls the commercialization of self-improvement: “It makes you think there’s an immediate pathway to success in a finite period. If you join a program and you are supposed to lose 50 pounds in 12 weeks and you don’t, the only way to see that is that you failed. But maybe it’s not a failure, it’s just that those 50 pounds were meant to come off in two years instead of 12 weeks.”
Wellness retreats prompted her mindset shift
Venrick went on her first retreat, with GirlTrek, in 2022, where she relaxed and poured into herself. The experience changed her mindset: “I realized the reason I hadn’t been successful was because I didn’t believe I could do it. I had been buying into others’ versions of success. I never really wrote my own story. External things playing in my head had laid a false foundation.”
She recognized the power of the mindset shift: “That’s the catalyst to everything. Where the mind goes, the body follows.”
She got home and told her husband she was redesigning herself around her own idea of success. “I began to be the authentic version of myself instead of trying to put myself in a box, and I became the happiest version of me there ever was,” she says.
A photo that was taken before the retreat marks the moment Venrick began to change. “I had to talk to myself because I knew I wasn’t going to like what I saw. But what I saw was me. There are a couple of photos where my midsection is probably 60 inches around. I cried seeing those photos,” she says.
At the same time, zooming in on the smile on her face showed how happy she was. “I thought, I want to be happy, but I don’t want that body anymore, so let me figure out what brings me joy and allows me to become healthier,” she says.
A second retreat, with FitnNu in 2023, taught her about healthy choices. “No one is perfect, but each choice can be better,” she says.
She went on another retreat with Whole Experience in January. “Without this retreat, I would not have put all of the tools together to value my whole self. I had to trust myself to travel out of the country alone to just pour into myself and design my approach to wellness since I did not fit into the ‘norms’ of society. This is where my anxiety quieted and my zest for joy for myself began to stir,” she says.
She focuses on mobility and inches lost, not on the scale
Venrick says, “I found that when I focused on mobility versus endurance or cardio or strength training, things just started melting off naturally. And once the mobility and my health and strength started to improve, I started to lose weight, and I started doing more things.”
She layered on more positive changes. She made healthy adjustments to her diet, and she pushed herself further physically. Walking and gardening have been key parts of her health improvements. She has a community garden about a half-mile from her home, and she used to drive, but now she walks there. If she needs to bring supplies, she puts them in a backpack. “I changed my focus to the things I love,” she says.
At first, Venrick weighed herself often. But one day, her scale glitched and instead of replacing it, she decided to take pictures. “When I did that, I started working on my mobility more, and I still haven’t gotten back on the scale. I measure my success in the loss of visceral fat around my midsection and in my ability to power my body through the joyous moments I desire,” she says.
Over two years, Venrick lost a total of 100 inches. “I measured from neck to calf, because the scale was only gradually moving,” she says. The biggest losses came in her waist (18 inches), upper belly (11 inches) and thighs (10 inches).
Positive changes sparked more positive changes
The improvements Venrick has made in her health have spread to other parts of her life. “They have laid the foundation to shift my mindset and explore other things I would not have done. I wasn’t confident enough to try some things. Each time I meet a milestone or stretch beyond it, it opens new doors. It’s not because I’ve lost weight or because I’m more mobile. I’ve just thought about certain things and asked, ‘Why not me?’”
Venrick’s confidence pushed her to form a hiking group called Easy Does It Hiking. “I’m not trying to summit. I just want to get out and have an enjoyable time doing something that’s free, that’s always going to be there and that I can do anytime I want. I want anyone who looks like me and who has been me to see me as an example,” she says.
Her confidence doesn’t eliminate her fear, but it gives her the strength to push past it: “I’m shaking on the inside. Are people staring at me? Are they saying I’m fat? Are they saying I’m not cool enough? Are they saying my leggings are old? Are they saying my shoes are dirty?”
Venrick recognized that her anxiety ignites her fight-or-flight response: “The tools I learned at the retreats allow me to honor my anxious thoughts and redirect them into compliments such as, ‘I love the glow of my skin today,’ or, ‘My new hairstyle is kinda sexy today.’”
Even though she’s outside her comfort zone, she wants to show people like herself that there’s a group for everyone. “I’m not here to represent the normal outdoor enthusiast. Society has ignored people like me for too long. We are here, and representation matters. I want to be that person in Colorado who represents women like me. Women in different stages of life. Women of all ages. Women with kids and with no kids. Women who are sometimes financially stable and sometimes not. Who just want to get up with a smile on their faces, walk out the door and know that they are happy.”
She realized how important it was to connect with support
Venrick had always thought of support as therapy, or as a group coming together to solve a problem. “I realized support is what you need as an individual. I needed open-ended, unfiltered support,” she says.
She saw a group of women on the TODAY Show who talked about their experiences with the Start TODAY Facebook group. “They were in different parts of the world, but their ability to come together and support each other was the catalyst for them to keep going,” she says.
She joined the group but didn’t post at first. “I started doing the challenges and not saying anything. Then I thought, ‘This is kind of fun. I should let somebody know that I’m enjoying them.’ I commented one day, and then I thought, ‘Oh Lord, I made a comment in this huge group and I need to pull it back. But it was out there. And then someone else said they felt the same way, too. Even if I say my hair looks like I stuck my finger in a socket, someone will say they feel that way. I always know someone out there is going to understand me.”
She appreciates how everyone finds support for their goals in the group. “The external worldviews don’t exist. You’re never valued by your appearance or your ability. You’re working toward your own goals, and everybody supports everybody in their own goals, whatever they are,” she says. “And every day is a new day. Even if you have a bad day, that’s OK. You recognized it, and that was a win.”
Venrick finds support from the group in unexpected places. “The love comes from pure support and joy. When someone posts a picture of a flower, they’re showing you they saw beauty in the world. Not just the flower, but the beauty from their eyes. It gives you confidence that your opinion matters, and that you matter not only to yourself, but to the world.”
She also credits her husband, two kids, friends and activity groups with supporting her. “One day I woke up, looked around and said, ‘I have an arsenal of support. And if I don’t succeed in the way I thought, it’s a lesson learned. I have the resources to start over again,” she says.
Where she’s headed next
Venrick is an ambassador for OutDoor Afro Colorado, supporting Black leadership in nature. She’s providing opportunities for poeple like herself to explore low-cost outdoor adventures. She’s also a crew leader for GirlTrek, whose goal is to have over a million African American women and women of color around the world extending their life expectancy by walking.
And in July, she attended a program called Becoming an Outdoors Woman, a predominantly female-led training session focused on outdoor activities. “That’s extremely out of my comfort zone,” she says. “But by focusing on health, mobility and my mindset, I see so many opportunities.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
2024-09-05T22:00:23Z dg43tfdfdgfd