I didn’t know that I had that much weight to lose. To be honest, I didn’t look that big. But I was big enough to be unhappy, miserable, and ashamed about the way I looked. I had deep rooted emotions and feelings about my weight that tied back to my mother. All mothers and daughters talk about weight, I’ve discovered. They do it in different ways and at different times, but every girl I know has had some version of the “are you sure you want to eat that?” question occur between their mother and their mouth.
I hit 100lbs in sixth grade. I distinctly remember realizing that my weight was no longer two digits, but three. Three numbers wide. It was also in my middle school years that my breasts and other womanly features started coming into play. I think I skipped training bras and went right into the Olympic bras. I don’t remember being an A, B, or C cup. I developed fast and I was coming to the conclusion that I was different than other girls in my grade. Middle school boys have the social decency levels of a piece of lettuce, and the IQ of a crayon, so they had no idea that they were staring or that trying to shove things down my shirt was rather tramatic. They just saw boobs.
My high school years were punctuated by ill-fitting clothes, no boyfriends or crushes, as well as eating. I would eat soft pretzels and chocolate chip cookies for lunch. After school, it was a large sugary coffee and raiding our pantry in search of bread, cookies, crackers, and chips. Dinner was a family affair where eating everything on your plate was a requirement. My dad is an incredible cook, and his brownies, cakes, and other delicious treats were regular occurances. My sophomore year, my parents told me (at Baskin Robbins, whilst in the middle of my mint chocolate chip) that they had signed me up for the cross country team. I was speechless and stunned (but not enough to stop eating my ice cream). I came in last in my first race. I went in the bathroom and tried not to cry.
My senior year, my sister and I went in for a check up at our pediatritions office. While we were there, I was ambushed by a letter my mother had written to our doctor about my weight and how she didn’t know what to do about it. I was told that I had a good 20lbs to lose. I remember going back to school, walking into the counselors office, and sitting down and crying because my mother told me that I was fat. No, she didn’t tell me. She told the doctor. I never talked to her about the letter and it wasn’t brought up. The counselor told me that I was not fat. I don’t remember her name, but I loved her for her compassion.
I went to college and gained about 10 more pounds in the dorms. I was aware of my weight and that I was unhappy. But I wasn’t unhappy enough to do something about it. I hadn’t hit that wall yet. But it was coming. The summer after my freshman year, I did nothing but sit around and eat and be around family. I didn’t see friends, I don’t think I even had friends yet.
My sophomore year of college was where I hit my wall. I stepped on the scale and it said 159.8lbs. I couldn’t breathe. At 5’2, 162 lbs was clinically obease. I couldn’t be obese. I couldn’t live the way I was living. So I vowed to go to the gym every day until I lost the weight. I wouldn’t eat junk. I wouldn’t be this way anymore. And when my alarm went off in the morning…. I hit snooze and went back to sleep instead of going to the gym.
That was my first wall. My second was coming to the conclusion that my mother wouldn’t love me more if I was thinner. All growing up, I thought my mother would love me more if I was skinny, and I didn’t want to face that reality. I couldn’t bear the thoguth that my mother’s love was conditional on the way I looked. So, if I never changed the way I looked, I wouldn’t find out if that was true. Now, I should say here, that my mother never said that she would do this. This was an assumption I had made based on her behavior and my insecurities and my feelings about her feelings about my weight.
My third wall was realizing why I was eating and in what kind of situations did I eat. I realized that I ate when I was bored and I ate for something to do. And I ate if there was food in front of me. It was compulsive. If there was food in front of me, and I was bored, that food had no other option than going in my mouth. If I wasn’t busy, I’d go get a snack. So I worked little by little to stop putting myself in situations where I would eat. I used to schedule classes around the lunch and dinner times in my sorority, and then I changed so that my school didn’t revolve around food. I missed lunches and dinners and would eat from the salad bar that was kept for us instead of the (rather camp-like) meals served. I started eating for fuel rather than comfort. I stopped drinking milk and started drinking water. I never drank soda or alcohol much, so I didn’t have to worry about those calories. I got busy with school, and my sorority, and stopped getting bored.
My junior year was focused on being the PHC VP of Recruitment, the biggest position in all of Greek life. I was insanely busy and had no time to focus on eating, or for that matter, school. My grades suffered. But again, I was busy and not putting myself in situations where food was readily available. Senior year was no different.
After graduation, I started working hours and hours on my feet at Nordstrom. This is another way to lose weight. Working at a desk job can be whatever, but working on your feet is like getting paid to work out. Retail and restaurant. The two R’s. Do it. I lost another 5lbs in a few weeks on top of the 20lbs I had lost over the last.
My last 10lbs that I lost came from heartbreak. I had my heart smashed by a guy who I had settled for in the first place. He was beneath me, but he said he loved me and I said it back, and as soon as I started to fall for him, he broke me. The stress from the few days that the break up took place was about 5lbs, and the few weeks after the breakup was another 5. I wasn’t sleeping well, I wasn’t eating, and I was working on my feet at a restaurant. I don’t suggest this method of weight loss, but it is effective.
I got down to 125lbs. A 35lb weight loss. I’ve gained about 8lbs of it back after being on vacation and having junk food around the house and eating as an activity rather than a necessity, but I have started running to get back down to 125lbs and possibly 120lbs. But by following the guidelines that I set for myself, I will return to my goal weight.
-Know why you eat. I eat for something to do and for comfort and when I’m bored.
-Know the situations that stimulate you to eat. If there’s food in front of me, I’ll eat it. If there’s junk food in my apartment, I’ll eat it. If I’m around my mother, I eat.
-Know that you can’t lose weight for other people. You have to lose it for you and no one else.
-Know that it’s worse to eat food you love and live in a body you hate. When you don’t love your body, it affects your entire life. Even though I’ve gained weight back, I still love my body.
So my advice to you is not to diet or to work out or whatever, but to get to that place where you’re ready to live differently, and it’ll happen.
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