The Past

I'm starting this journal so I can finally be honest about my weight loss journey. I've been keeping track at my every day LJ but I find myself not telling the whole truth sometimes. I shouldn't feel the need to edit my thoughts in my own journal, really what's the point of having one if I can't be honest with myself? But, being me, I worry entirely too much about what others think and sometimes it keeps me from saying things I'd say otherwise.

Well, no more.

Here I can be free to say exactly what I think about things, and how I feel about things. I'm going to find out how it feels. Starting this healthy kick is hard enough without adding some warped sense of pressure to the mix.

My highest weight was 212 pounds. How did that happen?! It's not like the weight just hopped on my ass overnight. It's taken years for the scale to creep up as high as it has. In a way I feel shocked that it's gotten so bad, and yet I watched it happen and did nothing to stop it. It's like watching some made for TV movie about someone else's life. You know, a woman marries the seemingly perfect man only to find out after the honeymoon that he likes to beat on his wives. You see it and think, that is just so dumb. How could she have let that happen? How did she not see the signs? That will never happen to me! I would never be so stupid. Etc. etc. etc.

I'm here to tell you, it can happen to anyone.

But I'm going to start at the beginning, when weight started to become an issue for me. I'm not going to re-hash that awful period of my life, but the gist of the story is that I found myself dealing with emotional problems I'd never even imagined before. I can look at it now and admit it was a stage of depression, but I didn't know it at the time. I became withdrawn from most of my friends, I stopped going out and doing things, I was at odds with my family, and my stress level was through the roof. I was a mess. This was the first time I gained weight. I went from 125 pounds to around 150 pounds.

Then came a period where I was so busy and had such a wacky schedule that eating was the least of my concerns. I grabbed fast food, when I remembered to eat at all. Before I knew it I was back down to about 130 pounds. I was far from healthy, I cringe when I think of my eating habits at the time, but I remember how excited I was when I bought my first pair of Tommy Hilfiger pants in a size 7 and they fit perfectly.

Not long after that, my life settled down a lot. I got a steady job with normal hours, my lifestyle changed quite a bit, and I slowly began gaining weight. Not a lot, just a few pounds here and there, but enough that people started noticing. And commenting.

Let's fast forward to 2004. My stepdad was offered a job in the great state of Alaska, so he and my Mom were getting ready to move, and they asked if I wanted to come with them. I'll be honest, my first thought was 'are you kidding me? Alaska?!' Utter shock. Then I said why not? If I hate it I can always move back, right? Laziness ensued. I wasn't working when we first moved here, so I sat on my ass all day reading like there was no tomorrow, playing with my beloved Yorkie-Poo Nika, and spending the days with my Mom. The weight continued to add up. I continued to pretend it wasn't happening.

Fast forward again to fall of 2007. On October 11, 2007, my Mom was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer. Ten days later my Dad landed in the hospital needing heart bypass surgery. Life as I knew it was turned completely upside down and my only focus was on my family. My Mom was in the hospital for almost a month before the diagnosis, during which time I lived on a mixture of Chinese food, Arby's roast beef sandwiches and McDonald's french fries. Not to mention Irish Creme lattes, Dr. Pepper and Diet Coke. My weight just went crazy but between phone calls to my Dad and stepmother and taking care of my Mom, I was too busy to notice or care about my health.

Mom died of lung cancer on June 15, 2008, and Dad passed away from stomach cancer on December 29, 2008.

I was an emotional wreck. I ate horribly, I couldn't sleep, I'd started having migraines. I was a mess, physically and emotionally. I finally saw a doctor and started taking fluoxetine (trade name Prozac), which helped me far more than I thought it would, which also pissed me off that I needed it. I also took amitriptyline to help me sleep, it helped immensely.

Life has changed drastically for me over the past couple of years. I've lost my parents, I no longer speak to my stepmother, my stepdad moved back to Montana, and my brother and I are still in Alaska about 2,500 miles from all of our family. This is how I got to the point of stepping on the scale one day and seeing the number 212. I couldn't believe it. I decided the scale had to be wrong, so I weighed myself every single day for a week and it only changed by maybe half a pound. I had a check in with my doctor and their scale was only 2 pounds different.

There was nothing wrong with the scale, there was something wrong with me.