If a blogger loses weight but doesn’t blog about it did it really happen???? I’m kidding of course but it does seem like there’s a lot of weight loss stories out there. Maybe this time next year I’ll have my own story to write but this isn’t it. Last fall I had a bit of a come to Jesus with myself and really had to think about what I wanted. I’ll be 35 this year and Shaun and I will celebrate our 3rd anniversary – if we’re going to have biological children than this is it – I have got to lose the weight this year because if I can’t we need to pursue other options. Part of that deep reflection was it wasn’t enough to want to lose the weight – how many time before had I been excited to start only to get discouraged or gain it back. I had to really think about where it came from and what struggles I face in the past; this is that story:
My mom was overweight my entire life, that’s being soft – when she died she was 5’4ish and a size 26 / 28. My dad isn’t naturally overweight but we’re a family of eaters so as a kid he was not huge but bigger than he is now – so it’s no surprise that as long as I can remember I’ve always been a chubby kid. One of my mom’s best qualities was her friendliness – I realize as an adult that she put a lot of effort into being friends with other moms so honestly I wasn’t picked on or an outcast. The first time I really noticed I was bigger than the other girls was when everyone in middle school was swooning over the store 5-7-9 . . . I wore an 11 : ( For the most part I still followed trends, wore clothes that were stylish at the time and had a nice circle of friends. In the 7th grade that all changed when I moved from public school to private school (it was over a safety concern I won’t go into here, but it’s important to note my parents weren’t just jerks who ripped me away from my friends). You’d think going to a school wearing a uniform would help with this whole clothes situation – it didn’t. I was new , I was bigger and this was a different group of moms – rich, thin, moms who played tennis. My mom was out and so was I. It was a really sad time for me and the first time in my life I felt like I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t pretty (thin) enough and my family wasn’t rich enough to overcome that flaw.
Between middle and high school we moved states and I was SOOOO excited – everyone was going to be new, right? WRONG!!!! I started high school a size 14 (a 1999 size 14 which is probably more like a 10 today) I was 5’10 and 165lbs – which is a perfectly healthy BMI but I had a chubby tummy and there was no spot in the cool girl club for the chubby out of towner. Seriously, my high school had two sororities – I didn’t even know high school sororities were a thing. But my high school experience wasn’t like the movies – no one called me fattie or picked on me for my weight. I made friends with a lot of the band kids even though I have 0 musical talent and fellow honors students. I had one boyfriend my freshman year and after we broke up no one asked me out again. Sigh, more not being good enough. As I headed into my senior year I was so ready for college and this time I didn’t want to ruin it. I spent the year eating an apple for breakfast, an apple and granola bar for lunch , running after school and then ate a normal dinner with my family. It worked – I still had a little roll but I got rid of most of the tummy, went to the tanning salon to look even slimmer and got down to an 8. Yay me!
So off to college I went in my single digit size jeans!!!!! Sure, most of the girls were still thinner than me but this was college so there was more size variety – plus the “pretty girl” sorority had a couple of fat girls so I was a shoe in, right? I feel like you know where this is going but I’ll continue anyway. My college had four sororities – two I had 0 interest in, the girls I actually liked and the pretty girls. I spent my whole life not being enough for that crowd and I worked so hard and wanted it so bad, and not to be a jerk but if membership was based solely on looks I was pretty enough to get in. First round of cuts and guess who was out – this girl! I would up joining the girls I actually liked and some of my best friends to this day are also girls I actually like so thank you pretty girls for recognizing where I really needed to be but at the time I couldn’t see it like that. I saw myself as not being good enough and after working so hard and feeling like I had qualified I lost it – the freshman 15 turned into the freshman 30, the sophomore 25 and the junior 20. That’s 75 lbs if you’re not keeping up -I had officially gone into the overweight zone. Once again Senior year rolled around and this time the stakes were higher – I was about to be interviewing for jobs – I couldn’t go on interviews as the fat, lazy girl.
The summer between junior and senior year I stayed on campus and worked in the dorms to earn room and board. I had plenty of free time so I got this book that was all the rage at the time – The South beach Diet and I followed it to the letter. I went to the gym every single day and by the end of summer 40lbs we’re gone. It wasn’t where I was when I arrived but it was an improvement and I was feeling good about myself again. I gained a little back during the school year but hey, I wasn’t a kid anymore I was a woman now and real women have curves, right? My graduation dress was a size 14 and honestly I was ok with it.
So I go out into the real world, get a job, makes some friends and life is good – only until it wasn’t. It was no longer women making me feel like I wasn’t enough it was men – specifically the ones I dated. Size 14 slowly crept up to a size 18 and then I maintained that for a couple of years yo-yo dieting losing and gaining the same 15 lbs over and over again. 2012 started off with a really bad breakup and for the first time in my life it wasn’t the voice in my head but someone actually telling me my weight was part of the problem. I took this breakup very badly y’all and wound up going to therapy – after 6 months and feeling like maybe one day I would love again one day my mom very suddenly died. This really spun my life into chaos – I felt trapped, I hated everything about my life and more therapy wasn’t helping. By the end of the year I was taking FMLA at both my GP and psychologist urging. It was the darkest place I have ever been.
2013 rolls around and it’s like the reset button has been hit in my life. I get a new job because I was so desperately needing a change and not only does it fulfill that need but it pays more – hey I can afford more than my monthly bills y’all!!! Plus, I inherited some cash so life’s a party – this is MY TIME damn it! I’m at peace with being single , I pursuing new hobbies and interests , shoot – I’m even looking into going on a week long vacation on my own. And then in June I meet Shaun. We’re quick to go from “hey, do you want to hang out one on one sometime” to him spending more nights at my place than not. And this y’all, this is important – this is where the switch got flipped. For the first time since I was 11 I didn’t have the voice inside my head – I was happy! But in all our happiness, life’s a party we went a little too hard on going out to eat. For all the pain and anguish that voice in my head brought me I gain more weight and faster when it was gone – by the time we were engaged in 2015 I was wearing a size 22.
Now you’d think that getting engaged would have triggered the voice telling me not to be a fat bride, but she was quickly squashed by the yaaaas queen, Shaun loves you just as you are you don’t need to be “sweating for the wedding” – and I didn’t. At this point my family’s concerned about us and the weight we’ve gained together but it’s awkward and hey folks, let’s just focus on the happy joyous occasion at hand. So we get married, I’m a fat bride and I don’t care. I’m not embarrassed about posting pictures in my swimsuit from our honeymoon on Facebook. I’m married bitches – I am loved, I am worthy and I am enough!!!!
So now it’s spring 2017 – I’ve decided I have two many clothes, I’m tired of always feeling like I have nothing to wear and damn it why aren’t there more women who look like me showing off cute outfits on Instagram. I re-start my blog and for the first time in years I’m doing something that makes me happy that doesn’t involve Shaun. Meanwhile we buy a house in the suburbs because we want to be settled before we start a family. In August 2017 I go to my dr for my annual physical, he’s always let me bring up weight first. I have a simple question, I know I’m beyond overweight and I know that causes complications with pregnancy – what do I need to do to avoid a high risk pregnancy. He looks at my chart and looks back at me. “I need you to get down to X at a minimum”. Oh shit y’all X is 88lbs away and good ole you’re not enough voice is back with a nah nah nah vengeance. I leave with a prescription for phentermine, it’s not ideal he says but just to help you get started. I order what to except before you’re expecting, start tracking my cycle, lurking in mom groups. And then the shit hits the fan at work, I’m working late into the night and the phentermine isn’t working because I’m still awake when it wears off and I’m living off vending machine food anyway. I try taking it later in the day – but now I can’t sleep and I only have 4 hours I NEED sleep damn it, so I stop taking it. This period only last four months but honestly, it felt like a year. And it shook my confidence bad y’all – I don’t like to blog about my job but what I saw on the life balance front from the moms who worked at my company was something I knew isn’t what I want my own motherhood to look like.
So now it’s 2018, I have no confidence in my life balance. Also, buying the house was little bit of a stretch in the short term financially so we don’t feel financially ready to start trying this year anyway so what’s the point. Now the not enough had nothing to do about my looks or my weight I was all about you’re not financially responsible enough, you’re not good enough in your career, you’re too selfish and shallow for this, you’ll never have enough patience. My birthday is in July and I turn 34 – as a married 34 year old women I should be like ok this is it, it’s go time but I haven’t worked on getting myself ready physically AT ALL. And that friends is when I had to be honest with myself. I had to say girl, why not? Is this what you really want, because if it’s not it’s ok but you have to be honest with yourself and your husband. And it realized it’s not the children I don’t want it’s the stress and the guilt- work and you don’t want to raise your own children, stay at home and your a last moocher – women can not win! Once I realized what was holding me back I knew I had to address it and that brought me back to that enough voice.
I’ve realized that the not enough voice I hear in my own head isn’t unique to me – there’s women everywhere who also feel like they’re not enough. I only got rid of the voice in 2013 because I let Shaun’s voice replace it, no offense to Shaun but really, I let a man’s voice be more powerful than my own even if it was a positive message – WTF! At 34 I realized that I had had enough of not being enough – it was time to confront the voice. I started thinking about what would my life be like if I though I was enough when I was young and perfectly healthy – would I have honored my body and maintained that health? What if I felt like I was enough being a little overweight – would it have prevents me from gaining more? I had to take a real honest hard look of what happened when I wasn’t down on myself either. Feeling like not enough lead me to not take care of my body, but being on too much of a feel good energy high did me no favors either. I realized I needed a balance. I realized that feeling good about myself didn’t mean I should give myself a pass – in not having any accountability I wasn’t caring for myself either.
I thought a lot about my future daughter, or my future son and how I want him to view women. I realized that when parents are too harsh they can push their children away but when they’re too free they don’t give their children structure than they need to blossom into adult hood. The voice inside my head is a terrible parent y’all. I’ve always believed that you have to love your self first and fill your own cup if you want to fill others so I realized that if I wanted to be a good parent to future children I had to be good to myself first. I realized I needed to look in the mirror and be honest. I’m fat – that’s not an insult, that’s not a hateful word it is a statement of fact. It is ok to make statements of fact. I do not feel like being fat makes me a bad person or makes me gross, ugly or unworthy of love. It is not part of my character – it is a very matter of fact statement on my body’s current condition. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word fat on here y’all, I’ve always avoided it but once I got over the fear of that word I was able to use it honestly.
So now you’re up to speed as to where my mind was as I entered 2019. This post was waaaaay longer than I intended but I felt like I needed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This isn’t going to turn into a weight loss blog but I have always been pretty open on here so I will from time to time touch on this subject – honestly I do have a lot to say but I don’t want it to be overwhelming. At the end of the day losing weight is something I’m doing – it’s not who I am.