How I Lost 125 lbs.- Part 1: Well How Did I Get Here?

Edited and reposted. Still not perfect, but better. :)

I remember the day my wonderful husband and I were sitting watching Survivor and commenting how everyone who goes on Survivor loses weight. I quip,  "I need to get on Survivor, if not for anything else to lose some weight!"  The hubby points out that they eat mostly rice. A lightbulb goes off and I get the laptop out to start surfing. I come across The Rice Diet Solution book right away and I am sucked in with the promise of losing 20 lbs. in a month.  I read countless reviews on this book. Most people who have done it seem to love it. But do I really want to go on another diet? Can I really eat primarily rice and lose weight and still be happy?   I am not convinced just yet.  All I can think is, "Here we go again!"

Allow me to back up here for a moment. I realize it wouldn't be right of me to begin any story about my weight loss journey without discussing how I got where I was in the first place. Whether or not it was true at the time,  I have thought of myself as a big girl most of my life though my weight constantly fluctuated because I was always on some sort of diet.  I wasn't heavy as a child, but when I hit puberty the weight started to come on slowly even though I was active in sports and cheerleading. Unfortunately, I had several knee injures that curtailed sports for me around age 14, and thusly, my physical activity went basically to nothing at the time when my hormones were raging and I was eating like I was still a kid. Talk about adding insult to injury. Not a good combo! In hindsight I see that I had a womanly figure quite early when many of my friends were still looking like,...well, little girls which is what we were. But, I didn't feel that way around my girlfriends who were a size 2 when I was a size 12... in 8th grade.

I heard the phrase, "but you have such a pretty face" more times than I care to recount.  Although strangers and the kids at school could be cruel, it was my family that seemed to be obsessed with my weight and took every opportunity to discuss it. I felt like everyone saw the weight first and me as a person second. My worth was tied to how much I weighed. This filled me with such feelings of shame. I felt that I disappointed my mother most of all.  She was so beautiful and thin.  And I... well... I didn't even look like her daughter.  Judy was a neighbor across the street who had a daughter my age named Tara. The adults used to joke that Tara, who was thin and cute as a button, was my mom's daughter and I was Judy's.  Judy was thought of as chunky because she had a little more meat on her bones in those days.  I know this was meant as a joke, but it made me feel unwanted and unworthy of even being my own mother’s daughter. I couldn't be her's- I was fat!

I continued to gain weight through high school and spent many a night in front of the TV watching MTV instead of dating, which like every teenage girl I would have liked to have done more often. But it's a vicious cycle. You eat because you feel awful and eating makes you feel good.... then you gain weight, so you feel awful, so you eat because eating makes you feel better... then you gain weight, so you feel awful... and so it goes.... and so it goes. Someone cue Fat Bastard please, "I eat because I'm unhappy and I'm unhappy because I eat."  Can you hear the bad Scottish accent?? And high school boys are not known for looking past the outer appearance. I met a few, but not many.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't sitting at home every night. I had a very active social life. I performed in many plays and musicals throughout these years and  had lots of friends. I was quite happy. But when I looked around at other girls my age who were dating boys and having what is supposed to be the typical teenage experience, it wasn't mine and I wanted what they had.  

I met my future husband in college. He showed me what real unconditional love looked like. We had many a long talk and through the time we spent together, I dealt with many of the issues I had growing up and the feelings of shame and guilt.  I forgave my parents for they were truly doing the best they could. In hindsight, my mother did more for me than most mothers would ever have done. She was always putting me on this diet or that one trying to help me fit in. She never meant to hurt me. No one did.  As I accepted what happened,  I began to feel a sense of self worth I never had before. I was worthy of the love of others, yes. But most of all I was worthy of self love. 

Our detailed story is a post for another day, but suffice it to say he accepted me for who I was and what I looked like. He became proud of me because he loved so much more of the person I was inside than what I looked like on the outside or how I made him look to other people.  My weight went up and down in those years. I was still ‘dieting,’ so nothing stuck for good. It never seemed to matter to him. God bless that man.

In those years, I also developed a severe milk allergy.  I went from being able to enjoy ice cream, sour cream and all the goodies of the dairy world (Cheese! Glorious cheese!) to getting severe abdominal cramps and not being able to leave the bathroom if I ate even a little! I began having to read labels for fear of accidental dosing and being up in the middle of the night sitting on the throne wondering what the hell I had eaten that contained the dreaded culprit- casein, a protein found in milk and used in many products nowadays.

My husband and I were married for 10 years before we got pregnant with our first child. One wonderful side effect to pregnancy for me (and believe me, I needed something wonderful! I had morning sickness that lasted 24/7 for almost the whole  9 months) was that my milk allergy went into remission for the duration of my pregnancy and for the first few months of breast feeding.  So, guess what I did for that time? I did what anyone would do who was in my shoes- I ate! And I mean, I ATE!  It seemed the only time I felt good and not nauseous was when I was eating.  A girl like me doesn’t need much more of an excuse to indulge, let me tell you. So, dairy was back on the menu! Cheese! Italian food that I missed so much was back also. I was teaching theater at this time and every day at school, I ate Sonic bacon cheeseburgers for lunch and topped it off with a Snicker ice cream bar. It became my 'little' routine.  

Go figure, I gained 100 lbs. with my first daughter. And in the four years before child number two, I had lost only some of it before getting pregnant again.  And once again, I was able to eat all the good stuff and kinda figuring it was my last hurrah (since I wasn't planning on having anymore kids)  I ATE! And ATE! And enjoyed every minute of it! Standing on the scale at the ObGyn,  I hit 301 lbs. and remember asking the nurse if she would please just write down 299 because I was so embarrassed.  My health was good so my doctor didn’t give me much grief about my weight. I blamed the scale. I always hated that scale anyway. It has it out for me. It is never the same as my scale back home! Why don’t you people get this thing fixed already!  And I only lost something like 5 lbs after giving birth.  How that is possible when your baby weighs almost 8 lbs. is beyond me, but that's how it went for me. 

When I told you I enjoyed gaining all that weight, that was not the whole truth. Gaining so much weight made me feel horrible about myself. On the outside I’d pretend I was fine with it, but deep down inside I was so ashamed of myself. I had really let myself go. The eating fun only lasted so long and now here I was heavier than ever and with 2 kids and a husband to take care of. I understood why so many moms are overweight these days.  I didn’t have much ‘me’ time anymore. 

I did lose a little bit because I breast fed and tried to watch what I was eating. Some days I even tried to get into yoga again. But my knees were hurting and my ankles still swollen and my spirit still quite broken.  I had gained and lost weight so many times and I was tired. I hit a plateau after losing about 40 lbs. and it became increasingly hard to shed anymore. I am just a big girl, I thought and copped out just like I had so many times before. That was easier on me than thinking of the work it was going to take to lose any more weight. My husband would hear me make excuses and would say, “You're not a big girl. I don’t see you that way. I never have. You have a small frame. Stop  telling yourself a lie.”   I didn't want to hear him.  If I wasn't just a big girl, then why has it so hard to lose weight all my life?  Every pound was always a struggle. I was beaten down and feeling FAT. I didn't want to leave the house most days. My weight ruled my life.  How did I let myself get like this?

To be cont.