Weight Loss

My problem with weight started when I was about 8. And I wasn’t even overweight. But my family was and my mom let them know it by putting herself, my brother, and my father on a diet. While I dined on macaroni and cheese they ate frozen melon balls. While I ate cookies and my brother ate veggies, I bragged about the fact that I didn’t have be on a diet like HIM. He was fat, I was not, and I decided I’d gloat about it.

I do not remember a lot of the particulars about their diet and my lack of one; I do remember knowing that they were all indeed fat. And I remember that I wasn’t. I think that was the last time I ever felt comfortable in my body.

I am now 35 years old and the age of 8 seems like a very long time ago, 27 years for those of you who can’t do simple math. Twenty-seven years of fighting the battle of the bulge, sometimes winning, mostly losing.

In sixth grade I wore a size 7 shoe and a size 13 jean and I knew by then that I was bigger than the other girls my age. It was about that time that I started binging and hiding it. Back then, when I didn’t know how to cook much (and wasn’t really allowed to anyway) I ate things like Top Ramen, cream of mushroom soup, or rice cakes topped with various, often interesting (i.e. disgusting) concoctions including, but not limited to, molasses, Karo syrup, peanut butter, coconut, butter and honey. Yes, sometimes many of those things at once. I can still remember trying to hold the rice cake very still and level so that none of the molasses or other sludge would run down the side. I absolutely hated getting anything sticky on my hands!

I went on my first “diet” during the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I was 12. My plan was to not eat and exercise. Seemed simple enough. Lasted about 14 hours, though. Luckily I didn’t lapse into depression over it or anything, I just went about my pudgy life. Depression about weight would come much later in my life.

For the next three years or so, I thought about my weight a lot, but I never really did anything about it or made any effort to watch what I was eating. I know that I still hid food and binged sometimes. Luckily my efforts were hindered by opportunity or else it could have been much worse I'm sure.

The first weight I remember actually seeing on the scale was 135 and that was in 8th grade. And so began my lifelong relationship with the scale.

-I weighed 166 the first time I went to Weight Watchers when I was a junior in high school and proceeded to lose 35 pounds.
-I weighed between 122 and 127 in 1993.
-I weighed 130 when I met my husband in 1995.
-I weighed 135 when we got married in 1996.
-I weighed 165 when I went back to Weight Watchers in 1999 and lost 35 lbs again and became a lifetime member.
-I weighed 158 in 2001 when I got pregnant.
-I weighed 212 the week before I gave birth in 2002.
-I weighed 196.6 in 2004 when I joined LA Weight Loss and proceeded to lose 50 pounds.
-I weighed 236.8 in September 2008 when I rejoined weight watchers and proceeded to lose 60 lbs.

And there are many other weights in between. The highest weight I have ever seen on the scale is 236.8. The lowest weight I have ever seen is 122.5. Is it really weird that I know this?

It was just over 17 months ago that I went to Weight Watchers and started what I thought would be my last weight loss program. And I didn’t even think of it as a diet, just like “they” say. I felt excited and ready to start the program, and as the weight started coming off, I felt more and more confident that I was finally winning the battle I had fought for so long.

But as it turns out I never really lose weight. I always seem to find it again.

I weighed 232.2 today when I started this program again.