Diet and exercise to lose a few pounds never used to all that difficult for me. Once I get into my rhythm, I’m usually good. Pre-pandemic, I was at an ideal weight that I was happy with at 164lbs. At 5’7″, I loved how I looked and felt at that weight even though I was still considered overweight (by 4 measly pounds).
Fast forward a few years later and that’s definitely not the case. At one point over the recent Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season, I hit 191lbs and that’s when I was like “enough is enough”. January came around and I started going to the gym 3 days a week, doing an hour on the elliptical/treadmill depending on how much energy I felt like exerting that day. I also do intermittent fasting at the recommendation of my primary care doctor after I asked him to give me some kind of weight loss pill to speed up the process. He refused to give them to me, saying those are reserved for people with serious obesity issues. I love my doctor as he’s not big on the pill-pushing. He prescribes what’s necessary, when necessary.
Ok so I’m doing this fasting gig and exercising, but bad habits are hard to shake. Mine was eating late and snacking. My intermittent fasting schedule is 16:8, so I would start eating at 12p and stop by 8p. Initially it was hard as my fiancé tends to eat late so whenever he cooked, I’d still end up eating late. When I saw that doing so wasn’t conducive to what I was trying to do, I had to let him know we couldn’t eat dinner together anymore if he planned on eating after my cut-off time. He can afford to do all that as his metabolism still runs on overdrive. Mine, not so much. Now on the right track with the fasting thing, I realized the weight loss was still super slow even though I was putting it work on the cardio machines. I don’t do any of them at the basic level, I do the different level fat-burning programs so I would get a good workout, but my calorie intake was still higher than what I was burning as I had a tendency to binge snack – especially if a bag of flaming hot Cheetos was involved.
One weekend I drove down to Fort Pierce to visit my cousin and get some quality family time in. She happens to own a med spa business and asked me if I wanted to the Lipotropic B12 shots. She said it will detox my body as it cleans the liver and also help with curbing my appetite. Then she proceeds to tell me she will give me a one-month prescription to take home. Wait what? If you know me you know that I am TERRIFIED of needles. I’ve had to be held down in order to be given a shot in my grown ass age to give you a bit more perspective. But I trusted her and would let her as a professional do it more than me or my man. She laughed me off, set me up with 4 pre-filled syringes with long ass needles since she said it worked better injected into the upper arm muscle. She showed me the area and how to know where to inject so that I could show my fiancé, since I damn sure wasn’t about to inject myself.
I get back home all excited and ready to try this thing out. I go to my fiancé to ask him if he’ll give me the shot – and he refused. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. The only other person I would’ve been able to depend on to do it for me lived over 30 miles away! After talking to my cousin, she said if she knew he wasn’t going to do it for me, she would’ve given me the needles for the stomach shots. But she advised I can do it myself in the arm and so did my other cousin in New York who is also a nurse and who told me to “stop being a punk and just do the shit”. She’s the one who had to have me held down by her kids to give me a shot, so she knew all to well how much of a punk I was with it.
After watching multiple YouTube videos and a video my cousin in New York sent me on how to do it, it was Sunday and now it’s the moment of truth. I was supposed to take it once a week on the same day each week, so my day was Sunday. I put out a couple alcohol wipe packets and a band-aid, went to the refrigerator and got my first dose. I said some prayers, cleaned the area on my arm, remove the cap from the syringe and after about 15-20 minutes of constant hesitation and self-doubt, I took a few deep breaths, held in the last one, and sent that needle all the way in. I pressed down until it was empty and then simply pulled it out. Zero pain! Not even a little!
That was such a moment for me because I had an intense fear of needles where I couldn’t even watch someone being injected on TV without getting all cringy. Now at over 40 years old, I’m just overcoming that fear and it was such a great feeling! Now my weekly shots are nothing but another thing to do on Sunday until it’s finished.
Check out my video by clicking the link below for the hilarious details that were left out of this post! Stay tuned for a follow up post with the details of my journey on this stuff. It’s been interesting but there has definitely been results! We’ll get more into that in the next one.
DIY B-12 shots helped me get over my needle phobia! (youtube.com)