January 2010Monthly Archives

Ok, so I’ve had this blog post as a draft for over two weeks. It started off as a simply follow-up to a Project Monday post as part of the Rethink Your Shrink challenge. It ended up evolving into a long walk through my weight loss history. I have spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not I actually wanted to post this, but decided today that I would post it because it think it will ultimately help me along my journey.

Here’s my post as I originally wrote it on Friday, January 8. After that, I’ve added some more thoughts as of this weekend.

On Monday, January 4, Christie posted Project “Me” as our first Monday Project for the Rethink Your Shrink challenge over at the Sisterhood. The challenge was to take a look back at 2009 (and beyond) to try and get to the root cause of why we may have struggled on our journey.

There was a LOT to take in on this assignment, as you may well imagine, so Christie gave us all week to think about it. The goal was for all of us to then post about it today and link back up with each other with our thoughts.

So, here we go. *gulp* Even though some of my long-time readers/friends probably already know a lot of this, I’ll start with a bit of my weight gain/loss history.

I didn’t really have a weight problem when I was a kid. When I was about 5 or 6 years old, my mom joined Weight Watchers and went on to lose about 70 pounds and made Lifetime. Her stepmother and two of her sisters also became Lifetime members. I was keenly aware of what I ate and my weight all through my childhood as a result of my mom and her family all being WW members.

Even though I was aware of my weight, I also struggled incredibly with emotional/comfort eating from a young age due to experiencing a traumatic event in my life. I would turn to food for comfort, but also knew I didn’t want to gain a lot of weight, so I counterbalanced the food with a lot of activity like being in the color guard (flags) in marching band. Since I grew up in the country, there was always lots to do on the farm — hiking in the woods, going horseback riding, etc.

It was during this time that I also started running. I would take off from the house and just go for long runs to not only burn off the calories, but also to clear my mind. Running became therapy for me because my dad thought therapists were just a “bunch of quacks taking people’s hard-earned money.”

Here are a couple of childhood pics:

Third Grade

High School

The weight didn’t really start becoming an issue until college. Once I was away from the constraints of home, my eating habits definitely changed. Since mom was a WW, there were rarely things like ice cream, cookies, etc. available at home that were always available on campus. It wasn’t long because I started hitting the vending machines and such to get through midnight study sessions.

It wasn’t long until the pounds started creeping on … quickly. Even though I was still running, it wasn’t enough to make up for all of the excess calories I was consuming. During my sophomore year, I started a cycle of bingeing and purging after learning about it from one of the other girls in my dorm.

This went on for a few years until I finally realized that I was going to cause myself serious health issues if I kept up with the purging, so I stopped. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop binge eating. In the span of just over a year, I put on nearly 100 pounds. Over the course of the next few years, my weight continued creeping up. I made a few half-hearted attempts at weight loss over the years. I would lose a few pounds, but then give up and gain them all back plus a few more.

Everything changed on September 11, 2001 though. Yes, I know that date resonates with us all, but it resonates for me for a different reason as well. My mom, a Lifetime WW member who is also a Type II diabetic, had a heart attack that day at 58 years old. A few days later, she underwent quadruple bypass surgery. When I called my dad to find out how everything went, after letting me know she was fine, he also broke the news to me that he had just been diagnosed as a Type II diabetic. I could see the writing on the wall and it was telling me I needed to change … and soon!

On October 13, 2001, I walked into a Weight Watchers meeting. I weighed in at 336.6 pounds. This before photo was taken that night after I got home from the meeting. Big shock that I look so unhappy! Over the next 2.5 years, I lost a total of 138 pounds and had arrived in ONEDERLAND. I was under 200 pounds for the first time in YEARS!

Before

Down 138 lbs.

Once I broke that 200 mark, I vowed to myself that I would never cross back over it! Little did I know at the time, but just two weeks later my world would be turned upside down when I learned my husband had been unfaithful … repeatedly. I suddenly found myself in the middle of a very ugly divorce that dragged on for about 18 months. Three weeks after everything was finally settled, my ex decided to take his own life which put me into another emotional tailspin.

Not long after that, in the fall of 2006, I began developing health issues. I was having severe pain in my upper back/neck to the point that I could barely move my head. My right arm had gone almost completely numb and had little to no feeling in it. I spent months going through myriads of tests/treatments trying to determine the cause and to correct it. I saw a chiropractor, went through nerve tests, had MRIs & CT scans, etc.

Ultimately, I ended up having two surgeries in 2007 — a cervical spinal fusion and ulnar nerve repair in my right elbow. During all of this, I was on disability from my job for a year. I could barely hobble around to do basic necessities like going to my doctor’s appointments and grocery shopping. For the most part, I spent the better part of that year home-bound.

The last big emotional straw for me came at this time last year. I’ve always had a tumultuous relationship with my parents as a result of the trauma I experienced as a child. There are a lot of deeply personal reasons for this that I won’t go into details about on this blog. We’ll just leave it at when I needed them the most, they made the decision that they couldn’t be there for me. I finally realized last January that, for my own sanity, it was time to cut off all contact with my family. Even though I know it was the right decision, it’s still been a very painful emotional year because of making it.

During all of these trials and tribulations, I steadily began gaining back the weight that I had worked so hard to lose. If anyone had asked me if I were still trying to lose weight, I would probably have said “yes” with my mouth, but in my head and heart, I knew I really wasn’t.

Over the past few years, I’ve pretty much only given a lot of lip service to my weight loss journey. I would get on a kick for a while and drop 10 or 15 pounds, only to end up gaining it all back again (plus a few more) whenever something would happen that would set me off emotionally. By the time things were said and done, I regained about 80 of the 138 pounds I had worked so hard to lose.

As you know, I recently decided to start my own Project 100 challenge. It’s my personal goal to lose 100 pounds. Yes, I’ll still have more to go once I lose the 100 pounds, but I’ll deal with that last 25 pounds when I get the 100 gone.

When I was on vacation recently, I had my friend Tracy take a “before” photo of me for this challenge. Here it is:

Hmm…I don’t look very happy in this before photo either. Perhaps that should tell me something.

Ok, so that was as far as I had gotten at the time I started writing this post. I confess that just writing about all of the emotions regarding my weight loss and the situation with my family set me off on an emotional eating binge. I spent the next week after I initially wrote this pretty much eating anything that wasn’t nailed down. Thankfully, I have regained control of my eating and got my emotions squared away again.

I suppose one good thing did come out of it. I came to the realization that I definitely need more accountability for my weight loss journey than just weighing myself at home. I still love my Bodybugg and wear it daily, but I made the decision to go back to Weight Watchers for the eating plan portion of my weight loss journey. Even though it now means that I’m paying for two programs, I recognize that I need that accountability of facing another human being at the scale each week. It’s too easy for me to let me off the hook if I’m weighing in at home on my own.

So, I’m back to counting my Points® and things are back on track again. The bad news is that during my emotional eating binge, I managed to put on 7.4 pounds in one week. The good news? In my first week back on WW, I managed to lose that exact same amount. Even though I have a net loss of 0 pounds in the past two weeks, I’m still happy because I didn’t end up with a gain overall.

So, where am I now? I’m back on the road of my weight loss journey. I’m done with the lip service and half-hearted efforts. Will there be times I’ll still struggle with emotional eating? Absolutely. Will there be times I feel like giving up? Absolutely. Am I going to let myself do that? Absolutely … not! I’m worth this effort and I’m tired of being overweight. I WANT MY LIFE BACK!

Here is a quick Project 100 status update:

This has turned into a short novel at this point and I’ve not even gotten around to answering the original Project “Me” questions. Given it’s my bedtime for tonight, they’ll have to wait for another day.

Until next time …