Maybe because it's Monday, maybe because I saw some pictures of myself, maybe because I finally got around to throwing away my skinny clothes from the early 00's, I don't know, but I woke up with an urge to finally get the weight off. For those of you who haven't read my initial post, getting back into shape was one of the goals I had when I quit work. I have made several attempts at it over the years, but, like the house, I always used my lack of free time as an excuse not to continue. Indulge me for a moment while I give you some history:
I was a chubby kid growing up. Then I grew into a really fat teenager. My weight would fluctuate throughout my teen years but I was always overweight and because we women all have negative body issues as teenagers, mine just turned into more fat. Maybe a year out of high school my frenemy-cousin called me up one day and exclaimed she had been doing a low fat diet and lost 10 pounds "without really trying". This intrigued me so I asked her all about it. Because I felt some odd competition with her, I started doing a low-fat diet of my own and, like her, it didn't really feel like I was putting much effort into it and the weight started falling off. My weight loss surpassed hers and I quickly got addicted to watching the scale move down every time I got on it, sometimes several times a day. I was exercising and eating better and had I had the mind-set to accept things like plateaus, moderation and patience, I would have been just fine. But no, I was young and obsessed. I quickly concluded that if I limited myself to 20g of fat a day and had lost this much weight, then I could limit myself to 15g of fat a day and lose even more. Sure enough, the weight started falling off again. Then I limited it to 10g, then 5g and before I knew it, I was eating only lettuce and steamed broccoli. I thought I was looking great but when I fainted and had to be taken to the Emergency Room, I had a doctor that thought I looked like someone that needed to be committed to an eating disorders outpatient program. See, I didn't realize that some vitamins and minerals need fat to work. I also didn't see that my hair was falling out, my skin was dry and I was damaging my body. I looked like someone twice as old as my then 20 years, but my jeans were single digits and that is all that really mattered.
The eating disorders clinic really shook me up and gave me a dose of reality. I remember one group exercise where we all had to estimate our waist size and cut a piece of string that would fit around us. I was amazed at the lengths of string some of the girls cut for themselves and thought "wow are these anorexic chicks delusional, they are cutting string that would fit around them several times". Then we were paired up and told to cut a piece of string that would fit around our partner. My partner cut a very short piece of string for me and again, I thought how delusional anorexic chicks were. It didn't occur to me we were all in the same program, but I thought because my bones weren't jutting out like a skeleton I was somehow not anorexic. And I wasn't...I was somewhere between Anorexic and Bulimic with a big dash of obsessive exercising thrown in. We were told to analyze our piece of string we cut for ourselves and the piece of string our partner cut for us. Then we placed the string around our waists. Of course the string we cut for ourselves more than went around our waist...sometimes more than once. The string our partner cut for us was a little more accurate. That delusional piece of string my partner cut for me actually overlapped by a couple of inches. Here I was thinking she was delusional and she had a better view than I did. I had a very long cry about it and then stopped judging the other women in the group and got serious about getting better. No one in my family ever knew about it, and I never talked about it with anyone else. My family was very judgmental and not at all supportive of mental health care. They all had the "just shake it off" mentality and I didn't need the pressure.
I finally developed a healthy relationship with food and exercise and for more than a decade had a very healthy weight and body image. Then, life happened. There were several stresses, losing my dad, losing 3 jobs in 3 years (due to the economy and my profession), losing a long term relationship...etc. all in a very short amount of time. Then I met the man that would become my husband. There was dating, spending every spare minute with him, going out to eat, getting engaged, planning a wedding, etc. and my weight slowly started creeping up as I relaxed my eating and exercise habits. Then there was infertility, and my weight did creep up. Finally there was a baby! A 12 pound baby to be exact. I ate everything that would hold still long enough and gained about 100 pounds. But I didn't care! I was happy and content and figured my weight would take care of itself. It never did. No one tells you how much your body changes after you have a baby and those 5 pounds don't just FALL off like they do when you are younger. Weight loss was hard!
So here I am. I'm not going to give you my weight, but suffice it to say, it's too much. I'll post my progress, but for now I am going to keep my starting weight to myself.
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