Middle school wasn't too bad as far as how much I fought with food, but I do remember this is when I stopped eating lunch (and I have never eaten breakfast). Instead of sitting on the cold, hard, tile floor in the commons area waiting to be ushered into the cafeteria - if you didn't eat lunch you just got to go to the "square" and hang out. Oh the square, this is where all the "cool" kids hung out and where only said cool kids got to sit (sounds so pathetic now, but it was a HUGE deal then). So at 12 years old I was not eating breakfast and not eating lunch - this is where the metabolism started to take a dive and I didn't even know what metabolism was!
High school hit my waistline hard and for one PRIMARY reason...a little thing called - OPEN LUNCH! Yes, we had open lunch at our HS which meant we left the school parking lot in a mad dash to the "restaurant of the day" (choices: Sonic, McDonalds - my personal fave!, Taco Johns - a close second!, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway) and gobbled down your food faster than you could get back to the school parking lot!
Secondly, BOYS also totally had an effect on what my scale read. If you were a single girl you were a skinny girl; if you were a girlfriend you were a chunk monkey! At least that's my experience. Sophomore year I was a monkey, but after that ended my junior year I lost some weight. At first I think it was attributed to the sadness, depression, feeling sick to your stomach first love diet. But it was almost like people started noticing that I was losing weight and I liked that attention - this is where things got ugly, but I got HOT! Haha!
I can totally admit my illness now, I was a full blown anorexic. I would go days without eating then eat one meal and then another 3-4 days without eating, then one meal. This vicous cycle went on until I graduated high school weighing 98 pounds. Sure I was super skinny, but my hair looked dull and fell out in clumps, my skin was horrible, I would get light-headed standing up, I constantly had cramps from dehydration, I would wake up CRAVING water in the middle of the night, it was horrible BUT I never thought a thing about it - other than I was SKINNY!
After graduation came JUCO and NEW BOYS! Baseball boys! And I was cheerleading. Sounds ridiculous, but we were a co-ed squad and we partner stunted and in order to cheer at games you had to weigh less than 115 pounds tops or you rode the bench like a little FAT pig. It was almost as if you had a sign attached to your fat ASS that read Oink Oink! I did really well through my freshman year and didn't gain the traditional Freshman 15, but the summer after that year - things started to FILL OUT...literally.
When I started my second year at JUCO I weighted 128 pounds, not good! I managed to drop some pounds and made it through basketball season not having to bare the Oink Oink sign! It seemed like after season though the pounds were like magnets to my body! I think I got up into the mid 130's and to most peole I looked fine and I think I was "ok" with the way I looked. Until one day I saw a guy I hadn't seen in a couple years and he commented, "Oh, look at you! Got a little meat on your bones now!" I actually think he meant it as a compliment, but I did NOT take it that way.
I moved to Pitt and was a healthy size 6! I felt good, looked good. Then in January around my 21st birthday I lost some weight - I'm not really sure how, but I did and was in a size 4 and people started commenting on how thin I was and I LOVED it!
Then I became a girlfriend again and over the next year and a half I gained ALOT of weight I was in the mid 150's! YIKES! Well once that relationship ended the weight started coming off again due to the lost love diet! Then something else started, I became bulimic. For some reason once the initial love diet wore off, I couldn't control my food intake, or lack there of, like I did in HS. So, the next best thing - purging! It's disgusting, but for some reason I found it fairly easy to do and it's so bad to say, but I enjoyed it. How GROSS is that?
This continued off and on up until my wedding 3.5 years later. And even after the wedding until I found out I was pregnant 3 weeks after our wedding. Needless to say I stopped IMMEDIATELY! And I haven't returned to my prior eating disorder behaviors to date. And sinice I've had my son I've found it increasingly difficult to maintain my weight. Enough said.
For these reasons I have a love-hate relationship with food. I love to eat it, but I hate how fat I am. And it's my fault I'm fat - I know nothing about food, I don't know what's good, I don't know what's bad (well obviously fast food), and I don't like food that's good for you. I need help! I need to learn to cook! I need a lesson in eating, cooking, and nutrition! I do however work out 3-5 times a week! I do step aerobics and toning at the Y over my lunch hour and now that the weather is warming up Jack and I have started running again! I can't imagine where I'd be if I didn't work out - SCARY thought!
This is where I'm starting, by laying it all out on the line and facing my FAT!
And this is my journey to being HEALTHY!
