I debated a lot about putting up a page like this. I know that some people would see it as just some gratuitous ego stroking. Tooting my own horn, so to say. That was the last thing that I wanted this page to say. What I really wanted is for people who may be in the same boat that I was not so long ago to find a little hope, maybe a little inspiration, and possibly even an answer or two in their own efforts. This page is not only about losing weight. It's about self-discovery, learning to accept and even embrace change and finding the courage to approach life from a completely different angle.
To start off, I had been overweight from the time I was thirteen years old and throughout my entire adult life. There are a whole lot of reasons that I can point to as the cause. As a child, I developed young and quickly, needing a bra long before most of my peers and outgrowing everything but special bras made for me by a corseteir by the time I was in high school. I'd suffered a hormone imbalence, which caused severe physical and emotional effects and helped contribute to massive weight gains. I also suffered socially as a teen, with few friends and more than a few adversaries. I was also extremely introverted, preferring books to just about any kind of interation with real live humans. It was no wonder that like many people, I found my comfort in food.
Food became my best friend. It never picked on me or hurt my feelings, and it always made me feel better. I developed, as I got older, what could only be described as a love/hate relationship with food. Like all bad relationships, it is no wonder that it turned abusive.
Somehow, food ended up running the show. And I let it boss me around for a lot of years. By the time I gratuated high school, I was nearing the 200lb mark. In college, I passed that mark and continued gaining weight. I had a slight advantage in being moderately tall and well-proportioned, so I never quite looked as heavy as I really was. Yet one day I got on a scale and weighed in at nearly 250lbs! It became painfully clear, even to me, that if I didn't do something, I would continue gaining weight.
I wasn't surrounded by thin people. My mother was overweight, and most of my friends were at least as heavy as I was. The thin ones were my brother (who gave me all kinds of grief over my weight), and my father (who worked in the fashion industry). I had all kinds of obsticals in my way. I hated exercise. I hated vegetables. I told myself that dieting didn't work, that I'd tried everything from starvation to fruit fasts to SlimFast and nothing ever worked for long. Not dieting was even a political statement to me in it's own way.
That still didn't change the fact that I was miserable. I didn't like being as heavy as I was. As much as I complained about the beautiful people, the hard bodies that ran the world, I really wanted to be one of them. Still, the food was calling me and made it clear that I wasn't the one making the decisions. When I was upset that summer was coming and that I looked like Shamu in my bathing suit, Twinkies and chocolate bars were there to make me feel better.
The day all that changed for me was September 25, 1999. I walked into my local Weight Watchers meeting, determined to give it yet another try. I had done WW before and lost a significant amount of weight, but I was stunned to see that in the year since, I'd gained nearly every ounce back. I weight in at a whopping 245.6lbs! I sat through the meeting, but all I could see where the numbers on the scale. I was nearly in tears the entire time and finally realized that I had to do something to break this cycle of gains that had plagued me for so long.
Thankfully, the group leader, Lauren was a real inspiration. There were a lot of lifetime members of the group, who stood as living proof that losing weight and keeping it off was possible if you were really willing to work at it and learn.
That was three years ago...
It is now December of 2002, and I am down more than 90lbs! At my last weigh-in, after years of faithfully attending meeting, measuring my food, watching out for my treats and yes, even going to the gym on a fairly regular basis, I weighed a grand total of 155lbs!
I was no longer obese, fat, overweight... none of those distructive words. True, I was at the high end of the normal range for my build and height, but I was in the normal range! I was no longer shopping at Lane Bryant, but I now go to the Gap, Bananna Republic, and Victoria's Secret. Even my feet have shrunk nearly a full size!
This has been a painful, fulfilling, enjoyable, agravating and wonderful journey that I am on. I am not at the weight that I want to be yet, but I am on my way there. I hope that someone out there who is convinced that they could never lose weight might see this and hopefully reconsider. While I will discuss what has worked for me, I fully understand that everyone has to find what works best for them. What I can say is that no one is doomed to be fat. The first step is looking at that candy bar who thinks he can boss you around and remind yourself that you're the one running the show.
