A Brief History of Me

I've always been fat.

You know, I'm THAT girl. The fat friend. The girl with the really good personality that makes everyone laugh. The really cool girl that guys always considered 'one of the guys'. The 'Hey, your friend is hot. Can you hook me up with her?' girl. Yeah, that's me.

I have many countless traumatizing memories emblazoned in my mind from my youth pertaining to my weight. Family members ridiculing me, adolescent boys poking fun and shopping at 'fat stores' just to name a few. But throughout it all, I kept a positive attitude on the outside and was always viewed as a very happy, fun person to hang out with. I never let people know how much it bothered me or how much I was hurting on the inside.

I always knew I was overweight growing up, but I didn't have the knowledge or guidance to be able to lose weight. I naively tried several things that people told me would help me lose weight, only to be thoroughly disappointed and pissed off at myself for not being able to do it. Now that I look back at pictures of myself when I was younger, I realize that I wasn't FAT, I was just a little chunky. Why did I think I was some horrifically obese example of a human being? Maybe it was those family members who kept telling me over and over that I was fat. Maybe the more and more they told me, the more and more fat I thought I was. I think they did it to try to encourage me to lose weight, but it seems to have had the opposite effect. I would go into a frenzy of emotional eating when no one was around because of the misery of being fat. So yeah, thanks for traumatizing me when I was such an impressionable youth, guys.

I have one distinct memory from when I was in 3rd grade. In P.E., we had a phsycial fitness test every year where they took down all your stats and then measured your athletic ability with a series of exercises. I remember them weighing us in front of everyone and calling out our weight so that everyone could hear. When it was my turn, she yelled out '75 lbs!'. I was mortified. I was the heaviest person to be weighed so far. That was so embarassing and has been such a vivid memory my entire life. Nowadays, I don't think it's that odd for a 3rd grader to weigh 75 lbs because of the climing obesity rates in children, but back then it was like having a 3rd arm. I was a freak.

Fast forward a few years to age 15. My dad was taking me to get my permit and you have to fill out some paperwork about your physical appearance so they can put it on your permit. I remember my dad being SHOCKED when he saw me write down 214 lbs for my weight. I remember suddenly feeling really ashamed about my weight and changed it to say 200 lbs, where it stayed (it still says 200 lbs on my current driver's license). In my mind, I guess I thought 200 lbs was a little less shocking than 214 lbs.

When I graduated high school, I was in a size 16 pants. I had already been shopping at the 'fat' stores for the last several years of my life. I was overweight, but I wasn't THAT fat. I didn't have any medical issues and I was decently comfortable with myself (thanks to a fun job and new friends that accepted me for who I was). In the next 5.5 years of my life, I started college, went through a really bad break-up with my first boyfriend, found new friends and the joys of excessive alcohol and partying, met a new guy who was also into drinking and partying and took me out to dinner all the time and, finally, graduated college. In my last semester of college, I interviewed for a company out in Scottsdale, Arizona and got offered a position there. I quit my college job a month before I had to leave and lazed around eating everything in sight at the thought of leaving my family and friends and moving to a city 2500 miles away where I knew no one. I remember a half-assed attempt at losing weight by running on a track with a friend and not being able to run HALF of a lap on the track without having to stop. I could not run 1/8th of a mile without feeling like I was going to pass out. That's how bad it had gotten.

By the time I got to Phoenix, I had topped out at about 260 lbs and was busting out of a size 22 pants. Wow, how did I let it go that far?

When I got to Phoenix, everyone was skinny. I was commonly the fattest person everywhere I went. Everyone was into exercising: marathons, biking, hiking, water sports, etc. There was a gym on every corner and they were always PACKED! At this point, after I left the comfort of friends who accepted my weight and a boyfriend who didn't care how fat I was, it was painfully clear just HOW FAT I had gotten. I decided to SERIOUSLY try to lose weight at this point. It was a new city where no one knew me, it could be a fresh start to a new, healthy life. I did the Atkins diet for several months and got down to 230 lbs. I eventually gave in to the carbs, but didn't gain the weight back. I kind of just maintained until I met a friend that was a life long athlete (volleyball player) and who went to the gym in the mornings before work. She offered to meet me there in the mornings and help me workout. I also signed up with her for training sessions at the gym. I went to that gym for a whole year and didn't lose a pound because I didn't know anything about changing what I was eating and keeping track of the portions. The good thing was that I changed my body some by working out and by the end of that year could run more than a mile without stopping. The first time in my LIFE I had ever been able to do that.

At the beginning of 2006, I was about 232 lbs and decided to try the 'Body for Life' program because a really good friend of mine who is very fit swears by it. I did it for about 3 months and didn't really lose any weight because, yet again, there were no strict rules about portion sizes. I was now exercising and eating the 'right' foods, but just too much of it. In April of 2006, I found My Food Diary (http://www.myfooddiary.com/) at 228 lbs. This is a calorie counting website that tracks your exercise and body measurements as well as giving you advice on the types of food you are eating. It gives suggestions as to how much fiber, water, vitamins, etc you should be having each day and warns you when you've gone over the suggested levels of fat and sodium. I also found their forum to be very helpful and joined a group that was striving to lose 80 lbs in 40 weeks. With the support of this group of lovely ladies, I lost 20 lbs and got down to my lowest weight since I was at least 15 years old (remember the permit story?) - 208 lbs.

At this point, my (now) fiance moved out to Phoenix and I fell off the bandwagon with all the new changes. I tried to get back on track, but it wasn't very successful. I decided to try to train for a half marathon to try to jump start weightloss and get me back on track. My running partner and I ran religiously every week for months. We ran 2 short runs (3 miles) twice a week and finished up with a long run on the weekends. It was great seeing our fitness levels improve and finding that we could run farther and farther each week. I'm not sure why, but I couldn't lose a single pound during this time. I don't know if I was underestimating the food I was eating, overestimating the calories I was burning during running or what. (I ended up not being able to run that half marathon because I got violently ill the week before the race. =\)

I went home to visit my parents for Christmas that year and, even though I felt like I had my eating under control, I ballooned up to 222 lbs because I didn't run barely at all and fell into my old eating habits that I had when I lived with my parents. My only saving grace was that I got violently ill before the half marathon and lost 7 lbs because I couldn't keep any food down.

In 2007, I was determined to lose weight because I was getting married in October. But, try and try as I might I just couldn't NOT lose anything. I got my RMR and Vo2 max tested and tried eating to those calories and using a heart rate monitor to accurate tell me how many cals I was burning during exercise, but still nothing. By the time August rolled around, I had ony gotten down to about 208 lbs even though I had been trying consistently all year to lose weight. I exercised regularly and ate healthy foods. I tried the 'Fat Smash Diet' in a last ditch effort to lose some pounds before the wedding (and because I had bought my wedding dress 1 size too small to motivate myself to lose weight). I lost about 5 lbs during the first phase and then nothing for 2 weeks after that. Finally, I gave up on it because it wasn't working anymore and I had all these pre-wedding festivities that were derailing me almost daily.

After my birthday party, Phoenix Bridal Shower, Bachelorette party in Vegas, the wedding, the honeymoon and then going back to my old hometown for one of my bridesmaid's wedding, I was up over 210 lbs again. This time I tried doing the 'South Beach Diet' because I agreed with the types of foods they recommended and the reasons why they recommended it. I got down to about 205 on the first phase but then gained a few of those back during the next 2 weeks on the second phase. Then, Thanksgiving came and I totally went off the deep end. I made a ridiculously huge meal and tons of desserts that we ate twice a day for an entire week. By that time I was addicted to carbs again and hyped up on sugar. It took me several days to get a hold of myself.

So now, I am trying to eat according to the second phase of South Beach, keeping track of my calories (food and exercise) with MFD and trying to workout according to the Biggest Loser Fitness book. Oh, and training to run the half marathon again this year. I weighed in at 212 lbs yesterday, but feel good about what I'm doing.

I hope Christmas doesn't send me off into another downward spiral...

Ok, so maybe that WASN'T such a BRIEF history of me. =\