The First Day

So.  I'm on a diet.  <grumble>

Millions of people struggle with weight loss.  I know I'm not special in this regard.  I have been as small as a size 6 and as large as a size 18 (and let's be honest, those 18s are pretty damn tight) like I am now.  It never lets up.  It doesn't go away.  If you've struggled with weight loss once, you'll struggle with it forever.

This is my story.

Well...it's my story about how dieting sucks so badly!  Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware of all of the fantastic benefits of eating healthy, getting down to a healthy weight, looking healthy.  Healthy healthy healthy!  Ugh - that makes me cringe like little Jan Brady's Marsha-Marsha-Marsha! routine.  We all hear that it's the right thing to do for about a zillion different reasons.  I'm doing it because I need to.

I don't want to.  What I want, is cake.

My struggle started when I was about 9 years old.  Mother Nature decided to play a cruel trick on me by giving me the body of an adult before my age was two digits.  I had all of these curves, but the childlike desire to eat whatever tasted good without regard to the way it impacted my health.  My parents did their best to try to steer me in the right direction, which of course backfired like most parents' good intentions.  I decided that I would eat what I wanted to, when I wanted to eat it, even if it meant sneaking it.  Fat lotta good it did me (badum-ching).

By the age of 13, I still wasn't what I would call fat, but I wasn't thin either.  Back then, people referred to fat kids as having a 'healthy size'.  I was forever and always "chubby".  I could wear the cute clothes that came in my size, but probably never should have been cut that big.  Let's face it - some clothes are most definitely a privilege and not a right and should never be made to be larger than a size 4.  As a result, I was a well-dressed chubby girl who was always told that she had such a pretty face.  I cannot stand that phrase.  "Such a pretty face".  Yeah, well, bite me.  "Such a pretty face" means that the only thing about you that is remotely attractive is your face.  Everything above your neck.  That means that the other 90% of your body looked awful.  That's how I interpreted it.  Cut me some slack.  I was 13.  Aren't I supposed to be self-deprecating at 13?

When I got to high school, I realized the polarization of the kids my age.  I, as usual, was always in the middle.  My shirt size perpetually a Large or Extra-Large, my pants size perpetually a 14, and my breast size perpetually...well...huge.  I wasn't one of those loud and obnoxious chubby kids who insisted that they must be either jolly or a badass.  I was pretty much nice to everyone and I focused on my strengths:  I've always been pretty smart and there were certain activities I excelled at without having to exercise one muscle in my body.  I approached those activities with vigor and ended up with a pretty high self-esteem for a fat kid.  I still cling to those talents today, so my depression or anxiety around my weight is really compartmentalized to physical appearance and a general feeling of gravity having a greater and greater hold on my body.

After a relatively boyfriend-free high school I moved on to college, where I continued to dive into academics and my extracurricular activity of choice:  forensics.  No, not crime scene investigation, but competitive speech.  I know.  Why they share a name, I'll never understand.  Those were wonderful years...

and on...and on...that's how it went until I was 24.  I had graduated college, met my current husband who was unattainable at that time, so I ended up meeting my ex-husband and we got married, I started a job, got divorced, got re-married to my current husband, got a dog, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I now have a successful career and home life, but where I fail is within the confines of my own skin.  Each time I "finish" a diet, I go on a rampage allowing myself to eat whatever I wanted because, dammit, I earned it.  All of the dieting talking heads tell you it's a lifestyle change, and it is.  I'm a testament to that.  If you don't change your lifestyle, then all of the hard work and money you spent to get thin goes out the window with each pound of flesh you put back on your body.

So, here I am.  A closetful of clothes I can't wear awaits a smaller me to come to them week by week to see if I am any closer to being able to put them on and get them buttoned/zipped/closed.  That's where this stupid blog comes in.  My shrink who is guiding my weight loss advised me to journal, so here I am - journaling.  Hopefully, it can help people.  That would be cool.  But I am not nearly that kind-hearted.  My biggest hope is that it will keep me sane as I begin the dreaded diet.

Oh - anyone who gets around to reading this may wonder what I'm on.  It's the Center for Medical Weight Loss product that feels to me like a glorified Slim Fast (although it does taste better).  The nice thing about it is I have a licensed psychologist driving the whole process and an MD monitoring the effects on my body.  I look forward to seeing a change as I count the hours, minutes, seconds to when I can fill my hungry body with the next nutritionally balanced shake and begin to slough off the extra me that I have hanging out.

Wish me luck.

This is me and Captain America in the Fall of 2009.  I weigh 215 pounds in this picture and it's one of the more recent pics I have that show my weight.  I am currently 237.5.  I will be weighing every week, on Friday morning and will post the number of shame for all to see.  I certainly hope you all out there on the internets will keep me honest...or at least shame me into success.