If you missed Part 1, please click here.
First, your comments, emails, messages, facebook comments, and tweets are so super awesome and I love, love, love hearing your stories too. THANK YOU! Sharing my weight loss journey has been hard, pushing the “publish button” on a post literally makes me nervous, looking at these pictures gives me an ache in my stomach that I can’t even describe, remembering the past isn’t always enjoyable, but realizing how far you’ve come, makes it all worth it. All of you are wonderful people.
I left off telling you about how middle school was the beginning of my weight gain and how sad and alone I felt those years. High School wasn’t much different…
to shock the socks off you, somewhere in high school I tipped the scale around 280lbs-ish. I’m 5’10. I had room to hide the excess weight, but still, that much extra weight can’t be hidden and neither can your emotions.
Finding clothes to wear to hide in, are hard to find. I found myself often going into my dad’s closet (how feminine does that make a teenage girl feel!?) and wearing one of his polo shirts, thinking that the bigger the shirt the easier it was to hide my weight. Wearing anything fitting was always quite uncomfortable. The times I did wear something fitting, I was very self-concious and aware of the lumps and excess weight hanging out. Which in turn never makes for a very fun outing because your self-conciousness overrides your ability to really enjoy the event.
I never really felt girly and pretty. Sure, I loved having my hair look perfect, my make-up being flawless, but I always just miserable in my own skin.
DIET: Somedays I would eat healthy, or so I thought, and think “this is it! I’ve figured it out, I’m finally going to beat this weight.” Then tragically I’d fall back into familiar patterns and eat way too much of anything really. Good or bad. I started my first job at age 16, a hostess at Red Lobster, with 30% food, I often ate the Cajun Chicken Pasta (hated seafood mind you, ironic I know), and the multitude of free cheese biscuits that I comsumed, (oh and WITH a side of ranch) was ridiculous.
ACTIVE: Besides working at a job that required me to stand for 4-5 hours at a time. Physical activity was still non-exisitant.
High school ended and I was tired of being overweight. I went to an Old Navy to purchase a new pair of jeans… when the only size that fit me was a size 20, I knew this was not how I wanted to live my life. I hated this rut of a life I had created and wanted a change. I wasn’t a child anymore, I could make decisions for myself. I had an epiphany. If I want to change my outward appearance I had to do something about it. No one could do it for me.
I joined a gym.
A glimmer of hope in a very redundant cycle of hopelessness.
Working out. As simple as it is, for someone never being introduced to the activity, can seem like the most impossible task. Sure I was afraid to try out the gym for the first time. But having friends join with you, made the whole new venture seem so less threatening. I came to realize I really loved being there. I loved working out. A whole new world that I had always shied away from for fear of not being “good enough” to even try it. I think back about my train of thought back then and it makes me sad for that girl, the girl who thought she wasn’t good enough, just because of being overweight.
Exercise was good. I felt good about myself working out. It satisfied me. I felt stronger and happier working out.
However, exercise without proper nutrition does not accomplish weight loss.
I felt smaller at times. I felt the same at times. I never saw true weight loss. I came to the conclusion I needed to diet.
Now living on my own, I felt more in charge than ever of my diet. My mom had this book… I had heard about this diet and I just knew this was going to be the tipping point in which I defeated obesity!
I would do the Atkins Diet.
I followed the plan very strictly, eating huge portions of what was allowed and lost somewhere around 20-30lbs (remember I never really weighed myself, I focused more on how my clothes fit and what size I was). I felt fantastic. I felt pretty, I felt like I was going to be thin forever.
Let me tell you the problem with fad diets.
- They’re a fad. Translation its not going to last, meaning its all hype and promising you something that it cannot truly fulfill.
- It’s a diet. DIETS DON’T WORK. But… I didn’t discover that until later.
Once I had lost some of the weight and was nicely in a size 14 and felt good about myself. I decided to forfeit the Atkins Diet. Because I had arrived, I knew how to be healthy and continue to lose weight.
The bad thing about the Atkins Diets, as soon as you stop the “diet”. All those pounds that came off so rapidly, come back to haunt you… and then some…
Naturally, I didn’t plan on gaining the weight that I had lost back. But it happened.
Frustrated. I would workout, (because I truly did love it) in hopes to lose weight again. But eating whatever you want and then working out and vice versa, only does one thing…
Keeps you at the same weight. No progress.
and that’s how it was, for years.
The difference though, I may not have shed the excess weight, but working out at the gym gave me confidence in myself. I liked that girl I was when I worked out. I loved fitness. I was missing a key factor in achieving weight loss; my diet. Not A diet, a fad, a pill, a drink. My daily diet. I hadn’t figured that part out yet.
Who’s saying what?