My Story (LONG) - if anyone is interested . . .

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Bri
I Love You to Pieces!

Member since 5/05

9919 total posts

Name:
Brianne

My Story (LONG) - if anyone is interested . . .

I know I have posted about my weight loss before in the past, but I feel like I need to post this. When I see people struggling with weight loss, it hits close to home, since weight is something I have struggled with my entire life. I just want to put this out there for anyone who feels that weight loss is feeling next to impossible. I also need to put it out there for me, almost as a form of therapy. I want people to know if I can do it, ANYONE can.

I was a finicky child for the first few years. This drove my mother crazy. Coming from an Italian "Manga Manga" family, the thought of having a child that didn't like to eat made my mother feel like I would not be healthy. I got sick at about 4 with a bad virus and would not eat at all. This terrified my mother. She let me eat whatever I wanted just so that I would eat. Between this and hours spent at my grandmother's house, with food on the table from the moment we arrived, until the moment we left, on a daily basis, I established my very unhealthy relationship with food.

Growing up, I was never obese, or severely overweight, but I was always the "pleasantly plump" one among my very thin friends. I always longed to be thin, be able to wear what I wanted, and learned from an early age from the boys that they would not like you if you were "fat." I sadly heard a couple of times too many that I was "fat." I guess compared to very thin young girls that did not develop early, did not have curves and a little extra on their bones, I was. My weight started doing a number on my head at a young age, especially since it went right to my stomach and I would lovingly refer to myself as a "potato with toothpicks for legs." I can't remember a time where my stomach wasn't an issue when it came to buying clothes.

Embarrassing as it is, I can admit now that I didn't know anything about nutrition labels or serving sizes until I was a junior in high school. Up until that point in time I just thought I could eat what I wanted, when I wanted, in whatever quantity I wanted. I had developed such an unhealthy relationship with food from very early on. I ate away my pains, my sorrows. I ate to celebrate. I ate because other people were eating. I just ate whenever. I probably should have been much heavier than I was. Once I realized that my eating habits were abnormal, and I decided I needed to start doing something to shed the "pleasantly plump" figure I had, my relationship with food became even more unhealthy. I would starve all day for one meal of something really bad. In my mind, I could still eat what I wanted as long as I made up for it during other parts of the day. This would happen in phases. I would lose some weight, then I would go back to binging. This was a cycle I went through throughout H.S.

After High School, I became a bit braver and tried alternative ways to lose weight. I would eat low calorie, high sugar. I would indulge in caffeine. I remember days where I would graze on a large box of hot tamales and sip iced coffee or frappacinos all day long. I would take metabolife and feel my heart race to the point I thought I would die. I tried Herbalife, which made my heart race, but not as bad as the metabolife. These alternative means worked for a little while, but the end result was not being able to do it forever, and becoming heavier than I had ever been.

I then started just watching myself in cycles. I would lose some weight, then gain it back. This went on until 2002. I then had to go on medication that caused weight gain and hit my heaviest weight. This made me miserable. But when I think back, I had been miserable about the inability to manage my weight for an extremely long time- most of my life.

I also want to mention that regular exercise really was never part of the equation. I have never been athletically inclined and more on the clumsy side. I was embarrassed to exercise or work out in public.

I tried Atkins. Didn't work. I tried the 3 day diet. Didn't work.

I eventually came to terms with the fact that in the past, when I would try to lose weight and failed, it was normally for these two reasons:

1) I set my goal for too much too fast. 10 pounds in 2 weeks used to sound realistic when looking into Atkins or South Beach.

2) I would normally choose a plan that restricted certain food groups, or was extreme. I had tried Slimfast, Metabolife, Herbalife, Zone, Atkins, South Beach.

I finally came to terms with the fact that these methods were not working. I hated myself and couldn't stand being me anymore. I resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't do it alone. I resigned myself to the fact that I would be ok with just losing any amount of weight or even just maintaining, as long as I could eat as realistically as possible. I needed to eat what I liked and not restrict food. Restricting food made me obsess over it more. I decided to try WW, as I had done once at 17. I walked into a meeting with one of the most amazing leaders ever and knew from day one that I needed to be there, every week, if I was going to overcome my battle with my yo-yoing weight. It came off slow, but I lost 30 pounds within a year the first time I seriously joined WW.

I left WW 1 year before I got married, because I made lifetime, thought I could maintain on my own and was "too busy." I gained 5 pounds back by our wedding day due to the "stress."

We then went on our honeymoon and I partied. I was totally out of control with the eating and the drinking, but it was our HONEYMOON! No biggie- right? Then after 4 days of our 8 day honeymoon, we were evacuated due to hurricane Emily. Because the resort we were at was not running to full capacity- NOT EVEN CLOSE, we decided to go home early and collected travel insurance for the remainder of the trip. We used it to book a cruise to Bermuda, which ended up being redirected to Canada because of Tropical Storm Franklin. We hated Canada, not because of Canada, but because it was SO NOT the honeymoon we planned. I turned to food as a means of comfort. When we came home, I was depressed from our "bad luck" and never got back on track. I had planned to go back to WW, but became too embarrassed from the weight gain from the honeymoon. I felt like a failure. I needed to lose some weight first before I could go back to WW. This never happened. 6 months into our marriage, I was 5 pounds shy of being at my heaviest weight again. I started counting points on my own and it didn't work. I started south beach and lost 10 pounds then gained 5 back. I followed Atkins again and lost 5 pounds. I knew at this point I NEEDED to go back to WW.

And I did.

And I haven't left since.

It's been two years since I got back to my goal weight and have been at my lowest adult weight for about 7 months.

While following WW, I never put a number on my weight loss. I just let it happen. If I lost I celebrated, If I stayed the same I celebrated. I was happy to just not gain. If I did, I worked harder to stay on track. I have come to realize that I will be attending WW meetings for the rest of my life. I am still battling food. It is my drug of choice. I probably will battle it forever. I have grown to love WW meetings and feel that being able to look in the mirror and like what I see, and not be ashamed, and being at peace with myself and my weight issues is worth the hour a week.

I am sorry for the length of this. If you actually reached this point, I thank you for reading my story and hope that in some small way it has helped you on your weight loss journey. I know how hard it is, but I will say again, if I can do it ANYONE can. The key is to find something you can live with and stick with it no matter what. Good Luck!!!!!!

Message edited 3/11/2008 8:35:10 PM.

Posted 3/11/08 8:28 PM