I have been overweight for a long time. In fact, the last time I was at the designated healthy weight for my height was probably sixth grade. That was around the time I stopped growing upward and started growing outward. But back then I had bigger problems than slowly getting a bit chubby, and I didn't really notice I was overweight until I was seventeen or so, when I started cringing at how I looked in pictures for reasons other than the hard to grow out poodle perm.
But depression kept me sedentary for years afterward. I never exercised. I ate whatever I felt like eating. By the time I got pregnant at 25 I was 183 lbs. When my son was nearing a year old I started making small effforts to lose the weight, all diet centered because I thought with my athsma I couldn't do any meaningful exercise. For years I fluctuated between 168 and 175, able to keep myself from going back up to my pregnancy weight but unable to lose any more than that.
Then a couple summers ago I was devasted by a break-up. I felt depression threatening to swallow me, but I was dead set against getting back into counseling or going on meds. So I decided to treat it with diet and exercise. I found myself at the gym three tines a week for an hour or so, doing the most intense cardio and circuit training I could stand. After two months of that I had dropped ten lbs! I looked good, I felt good... and then I got back together with the same guy and all that effort went out the window. I slowly started putting it all back on. That was in September. By January I was back up in the 170 range. By June I was up to 185. That was last summer.
Last Friday I weighed in at the doctor's office at 201 lbs - easily the heaviest I have ever been.
Now, even before I was overweight I was always self-conscious about how I looked. Being heavier made that much much worse. So it's ironic that at my heaviest weight I am actually the most comfortable in my skin that I have ever been.
Which is not to say that I'm okay with being 201 lbs. I'm not. I'm far more easily winded by exercise than ever before, I'm between clothing sizes so nothing fits right -either my pants are cutting off my circulation or they're falling off-, and just finding clothes that look good is a serious challenge. Since I have to look professional for work this is very annoying. On top of this, there are a lot of obesity-related diseases in my family that I'd really rather not get. And the antidepressant I just started taking has weight gain as a side effect, so this is likely to get worse.
On Monday I downliaded a really simple app to my phone. It's the most basic diet plan app I've ever seen. What I kike is that it just asked a few basic questions about where I'm at, where I want to be, and what I'm willing to do to get there. And it says if I lose two lbs per week, I can be at my target weight (145) by early February. Imagine that... to be back down to a single digit clothing size before my next birthday. All it will take is a bit of discipline. Well I'm inspired by the scale to be disciplined, and recording my progress here will keep me disciplined - at least that's the plan.
So here we go. Next check-in Friday, August 1.
