My mother was a dance teacher, so weight was a big deal, plus she struggled with it herself. The only way we knew of back then to lose weight was to diet. I learned in grade school how to diet and I remember I skipped lunch many times. Eat less, lose weight.
I look back on my grade school pictures and now that I'm older, I don't think I looked that bad. But I did get called "fatso" in school.
In junior high and high school I slimmed down because of my dancing, but I was always on a diet, and most days I skipped lunch.
What's interesting is I was usually 110 during the school year, but during the summer I would gain to around 125. I am almost 5' 3" so really 125 is not that bad. But for a dancer, the thinner, the better was our mind set.
At college I continued to dance and diet. Even a few pounds overweight and I was told I needed to lose. It was a constant battle.
One Christmas, my husband-to-be gave me a pair of pants that were too small. They were a size five. Instead of getting a bigger size, I promised him I would lose weight to get into them. What was I thinking? I wasn't ever able to. What in the world was the matter with a size 7 anyway? I weighed 107, which was actually a perfect weight for me. Like I said, I had some really warped thinking going on about my body!
Weight has been a big issue in my marriage partly because I gained a lot of weight with each child I had. It got more and more difficult to lose the weight I gained. I went on all kinds of diets and tried diet pills (thankfully I hated the way they made me feel) I even learned how to stick my finger down my throat and throw up. But with every diet, I'd lose, then gain everything back plus more. The scales continued to creep up and up.
The final straw for my body was the 500 calorie doctor directed diet I did. Towards the end I kept binging and purging because I was starving for heaven's sake, yet at the time I hated myself because I didn't have "discipline" enough to stick with the diet. My body basically told me never to do that to myself again!
Since then I haven't been able to diet much, although I did do Nutrisystem and lost about 40 pounds, only to gain everything back plus more. Jenny Craig didn't last long either.
At my heaviest I weighed 203 and was around a size 18. The hardest part about all of this has been my own self image; dealing with the self-hatred has been extremely difficult to overcome.
One of the saddest issues about my weight is all of the things I refused to do because I "needed to lose just a little weight." One time our family was honored as "Scouting Family of the Year". They gave us a gift of a family picture, but I kept saying I needed to lose weight before we could do it. I was a size 12 at the time. We never got the picture. What a waste. That's only one of many examples. Again, the warped mind-set.
I now know that diets don't work. I will never go on a diet again. I am done with the self-hate, the absolute desperation of out of control eating and weight gain. I understand how the body works because of the Eat and Be Lean program. It really is possible to eat to complete satisfaction and lose weight.
My goal is to prove these principles are true. This is not a quick weight loss program. I intend to get healthy from the inside out. I'm in it for the long haul and this time is for keeps.
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