"Oh, you're going to have to go more than that."
"Wow. Really? Are you sure?"
"yeah."
She went to 250, then the smaller marker just kept going up, finally at 15, it stopped.
You might as well have handed me a neon sign that read "265lbs--FATTY FATTY FATTYCAKES!"
I was ashamed, I was depressed, I was tired.
I kept my hopes up, and thought "Oh I'll lose at least 20 of that after the baby is born!" I ended up losing 13, 15 total 6 weeks after delivery...woo, 250lbs. I was wearing a size 3X, 24 jeans. I was bigger than my mother and my sister. I had always been smaller than either of them, except now...now I was the fattest.
*Flashback*
Growing up I was the skinniest person in the family, and by skinniest, I mean normal weight. I was a typical kid, average weight, height, etc. My family, however, they were all overweight. My father was morbidly obese (6'4", 350+lbs), my mother was too (5'9", 250+ lbs), and my sister was always on the 'chunky' side even when she was younger. I guess I got the 'good' genes...however, in my family, this meant I had the 'bad' genes. I was made fun of by my family members, my sister picked on me and resented me. And my mother, between making me her favorite daughter and her arch nemesis, well...you can imagine what that does to a kid.
Because of this, I thought that I needed to be fat...so, I started eating. I ate everything I could. I begged for Dinty Moore beef stew because they said it would stick to your ribs, and everyone in my family teased me about how I looked like an Ethiopian kid because you could see all my ribs...so I wanted something that would put weight on me. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), I played softball, so I was pretty active, all the time...this doesn't bode well for gaining weight when you're 10.
Eventually, however, mother nature took over. I hit puberty, with a sugar addiction, a skewed self-image and genes that wanted me to hold on to energy in case we had a famine and I was having a baby...(would have made an EXCELLENT cavewoman, let me tell you!) So, as a teenager, I ballooned up. I was still smaller than everyone in my family, but now I was 'fat' and I got teased less by my family, but more by my schoolmates. But I wanted my family to love and respect me...so, I kept eating.
I was also a nerd, who discovered computers and video games, so I sat around a lot too. And ate, and played video games...and ate some more. Eventually, I went to boarding school, where I couldn't eat all the time, and I was outdoors and active a lot; working at a horse barn is good exercise. So, I lost a little weight. My mother commented on how pretty I was looking, and my sister resented me more. I couldn't win...someone was going to hate me. It seemed like that someone was going to be myself.
After puberty took hold and I was a 'chunky' teenager, I met my first *real* boyfriend. He was 22, I was 17 and I was in love. I wasn't unhappy and bored any longer, so I started eating less. I also lost a TON of weight. For the first time in a VERY long time, I could see my own rib cage. I was, for the first time ever, a size 8. I had been in plus sizes as long as I could remember, mainly 12's and 14's, but when you're 17, those are big numbers. And finally I was in a 'normal girl' size. I had always wanted to be a normal teenager, who doesn't? And finally I felt like I was there.
That relationship went south and I moved back in with my mother and started eating again. Health and fitness were no where near my radar. I was still being told how skinny I was by my mother (who, at the time was an 18/20) and i was a 12-14 at this point. I got up to a 16 and met my future husband. He didn't mind a chubby girl and I was happy to meet him. However, this time, happiness didn't bring with it weight loss, it brought with it a wedding and babies.
And over the next decade I would go from a size 16 to a size 24, up and down, roller coaster-ing the whole way. I would jump up to the 20's and then lose some weight, get pregnant, jump back up to the 20's, rinse repeat.
Finally, things got so bad that I got fed up. I was angry and unhappy with what I had allowed to slip by in my life, and some things were about to change.
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