My Story

Food has always been an issue for me, for literally as long as I can remember. When I can eat next, how much I will get to eat, and how good it will taste are the questions constantly on my mind. I'm ready to break free of this way of thinking. I'm ready to find the middle ground between all or nothing, because for me it has always been all or nothing. I'm always either gaining or losing weight. I'm either eating "perfect" or binging every day. And this is how I got here...

Growing up, I was always a little bit on the chubby side but not obese or anything. Right before my freshman year of high school I lost some weight and was what I think of as "thin" but I suppose it was an average weight. I don't really remember that much about my weight throughout the rest of high school but I know that senior year I gained about 20 pounds. I went from about 145 to 165. I am 5'3 and 3/4 and at 145 I looked pretty good. I didn't look so good at 165. My freshman year of college I got up to about 170 or 175. Then I started to lose weight in February or March that year ( 2004). I lost 30 pounds and everyone told me I looked great- and I did. Of course I didn't think so then. My self image has always been horrible and my confidence has always been low. It went up a little with losing the weight but I still thought I looked fat and needed to lose at least 20 pounds (putting myself at 125- my dream weight). I met the man who is now my husband in June of 2004, right after losing the weight. It was such a whirlwind romance and I wrote in my journal within 2 weeks of meeting him that I knew he was the man I was going to marry. I realize that's kind of a crazy thing to say but I just knew it deep in my heart- and turns out I was right. We got married on August 26, 2006.

Anyways, I'm getting off track. Basically, after we met we started going out to eat all. the. time. We would hit our favorite mexican place, Qdoba, almost every other day! My weight held pretty steady throughout the summer (miraculously) but when fall came I started gaining weight. I HATED how I looked, even after gaining just 10 pounds. But I could just never find it within myself to lose the weight. Eventually, by September the next year (2005) I had gotten up to 190. I told you I was all or nothing! I finally was determined to do it and I got down to 148.5 by April the next year. (I have my weight written down by the way, my memory isn't that amazing) But then something came along that made it impossible for me to lose any more weight; I got pregnant.

Boy, was I happy I had lost that weight before I got pregnant! I would have hated to start out a pregnancy at 190. I had my daughter on January 30th, 2007 and she is truly a miracle and a blessing from God. I can hardly even write about her without getting teary-eyed. Anyways, when I gave birth I was about 215 pounds (yeah I gained a lot). A couple days after returning home from a hospital I was 190 again. So I started my weight loss journey all over again. I don't know how but I was able to do it right away. I struggled with a balance between getting enough calories and not too many because I was breastfeeding. I was always paranoid that I wasn't eating enough and that my milk would dry up. I lost a steady 2 pounds a week (on average) until I was down to 163.5 in the middle pf May. (I was breastfeeding basically full time this whole time too) I really just tried to eat a lot of fruits and veggies, whole grains, lean meat, and low fat dairy. You know, just eating healthy. I tried to limit dessert to once a week or so and never really had junk food. We would go out to eat about once a week. I started counting calories in the beginning of May just to mix things up a little and I lost 10 pounds in those 2 weeks. I usually had about 1500-1600 calories a day and 30 grams of fat. Anyways, we moved in the middle of May and for some reason that really messed me up. I think I just got out of my routine, and we probably had to go out to eat more than normal during the couple days that we were moving and I have never recovered from that. Yes, it's been over a year and I've gained weight steadily ever since then. I told you I was all or nothing! I don't remember the specifics but I'm sure after I "messed up" when we moved I just said forget it for that week... and then that turned into another week, and another, and another. By October 1st of 2007 I was back up to good old 193. For some reason this is so embarrassing for me to write out. I think the worst part is that I lost almost all of my baby weight and then gained it ALL back, plus some. I just wonder why... why would I do this to myself? It's got to be so unhealthy to go up and down in weight so much. My body looks absolutely horrible because of it. And I've heard that each time you gain and lose weight your metabolism gets slower and slower (making it harder and harder to lose weight each time). I guess I'm just choosing not to believe that. If it's true it's true, but I won't know until I try.

Anyways, going back to my story, because it is about to get even worse. Finally, in October of last year I decided to try Weight Watchers. I didn't actually pay for it or go to the meetings, but I figured out how many points I needed and my mom had the books so I did it that way. I did it for 2 weeks and lost 7 pounds but I didn't stay on it. So my weight started to climb again. In January of this year, my mom told me she and my grandma would pitch in to pay for me to go to meetings and actually participate in the program. By this time I was at 211 pounds. So I did it and was successful for a while. I ended up losing 13 pounds by February but for some reason I just couldn't (wouldn't) do it anymore. Which leads me to now. I am at my all time highest weight ever, even higher than I was when I was 9 months pregnant. How horrible is that? I weigh 230 pounds- last time I checked, that is. I hate writing that, I hate saying that. It's so hard to even believe. How did I get here? Well, every day I would tell myself "I'll start tomorrow" so I would let myself eat anything I wanted that day. Wash, rinse, repeat. I never have given up, not even for one second, on losing weight. I'm one of those people that hates buying big girl clothes, i.e. clothes that fit me now. I lived last winter in sweatshirts. Now I'm living in my husbands t-shirts that make me look even fatter than I am. I want to be a good example for my daughter, and I hate that I'm not. I have to hide the food I'm eating from her because I don't want her to eat it. That's how bad it is. I feel so hypocritical because I always make her eat really healthy (I'm really lucky, she's 18 months and will eat almost anything) yet I eat absolutely terrible.

There's actually so many things I want to change about myself. I want to exercise more, I want to be less lazy, I want to play with and focus on my daughter a lot more, I want to clean more, I want to spend more time with God, I could go on and on. But it's funny how all or nothing I am, because on the days I'm doing "good" on eating, it seems like I get so much done and am so productive in other areas of my life. Then when I'm doing "bad" (which has been the last year of my life) I just give up on everything. I feel like I have to do everything perfect or not at all, and I hate that about myself. In the past I've found a way to use that for my advantage, because I can be really successful at losing weight, but I just wonder if I'll always be this way or if I can ever actually change my mindset. It's so ingrained in me to be see the world in black or white.

It feels strangely cleansing to write all of this out. I've never written my "story" out like this, and really why would I have ever had a reason to?

So what's my plan? Well, I'm planning on starting this Monday. I'll post my weight and measurements and hopefully a food journal every day. I think I'm going to roughly count my calories but I'm not going to be super strict about it like I was before (I measured every tiny thing). I just want to get an idea of how many calories I'm eating. But overall I like to just listen to my body. Eat when I'm hungry, stop when I'm kinda full, and when I do eat, make it moderately healthy. And NO BINGING. If I could just do one thing right, I would pick that.

Well sorry this was very long and detailed, that's just how I am. And it is my blog, after all.