How I Got Fat: Part 1 - Prologue

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“I don’t want to die. I’m too young to die.”

I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep. My mind wouldn’t turn off; it kept flashing images of my parents and my boyfriend standing over me in a hospital bed with a tube in my throat after having open heart surgery.

You may think I’m being a little dramatic right now, but the truth is, this is a very real possibility for me. I am 32 years old, and if I don’t get my act together, this is going to happen to me sooner rather than later. Both of my parents have had open heart surgery, and one of my brothers had it in his mid-30s.

Signs and Symptoms of Heart Disease in Women

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I’m obese, have high cholesterol, a light smoker (on my way to quitting), and have a family history of heart disease, high cholesterol, and diabetes.  I am positive that if I keep on doing what I’m doing, I’m going to die before I’m 50. Well, maybe. But why take the chance?

My weight has been a lifelong battle. I wasn’t overweight as a young child; I was active, outgoing, and food was an afterthought for me. But then my best friend moved away and I had no one to play with, so I turned to books and became more and more solitary and less active. Food and books were my friends when people in real life made fun of me or ostracized me. They didn't judge me, they didn't bully me, and I could be someone else for a little bit while reading.

My mom has always struggled with her weight. As a child, I remember her making something called "Skinny Stew", a vegetable soup that smelled awful and featured cabbage as the predominant ingredient. Gag. She would eat it for lunch and dinner, trying to drop the last 10 or 20 pounds that she had battled with ever since she had me. She would drink Alba shakes as a meal replacement and take me to Weight Watchers meetings in a strip mall, having me wait quietly in the back with a coloring book while she and a group of women weighed in on ancient metal doctor's scales and rejoice when they got their 10-pound ribbon.

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We only drank skim milk, sugary cereals and sodas were not permitted, and candy bars and fast food were a special treat. We were encouraged to play outside, ride bikes, join sports teams, and eat our vegetables.

If that was the case, how did I get fat? What happened?

More to come in Part 2....

The Six-Week Frustration

It's been six weeks that I've been following Weight Watchers faithfully about 95% of the time. This is pretty awesome, and I feel great. My clothes fit much better, I have more energy, my skin is somewhat better, I'm not binge eating (and subsequently purging), and I just feel pretty darn good overall.

But this is the "make or break" point for me. This is the part where I usually give up. I start to get tired of eating healthy all the time, and while I don't fall off the wagon per se, I start to sneak off of it. It's a slow downhill slide that is a combination of the following:

• I stop tracking my food.
• I stop exercising because I'm tired or my muscles hurt.
• I start indulging in foods that aren't good for me more often than I should (because I'm not tracking them, so I don't know how detrimental they really are to my eating plan).
• I get frustrated that I'm not dropping pounds steadily. 
• This is often compounded by watching The Biggest Loser and feeling like a big loser (pun intended) because I'm not dropping 5+ pounds a week. I'm also not exercising for four hours a day and being told what to eat from a nutritionist. BUT WHATEVER. IF THEY CAN I DO IT, I CAN DO IT, my brain tells me.

So what am I doing to try and keep myself on track?

• I read /r/loseit and remind myself that I am not alone.
• I especially try to pay attention to people whose weight loss took 1 year or more, or had a substantial amount of weight to lose like I do (as of this morning, I have 98.11 pounds to go, having lost about 12 already). I need to remember that I didn't put this weight on in a month or two; this weight steadily climbed over the past several years due to myriad reasons. So it's going to take time to take it off and as long as the overall TREND is one that goes down, I am good.
• I remind myself how good I feel after I exercise, and how I look forward to it.

A big thing that has been sticking in my head lately is this: 

"When you decide what you want out of life, you'll probably be helped in making your decision by envy... There will likely be someone who is the object of your envy, whose life you'd like to lead. Do not scorn or reject that person because of envy. Learn from her. Imitate him."Ben Stein,  How Successful People Win: Using Bunkhouse Logic to Get What You Want in Life

Now, I'm not a Ben Stein fangirl (quite the opposite politically, in fact), but this resonates with me. I have to do more than just look at people and admire their accomplishments. I need to emulate them and put them into practice in my own life. And while I may not be able to, say, run a 5K right now, I can start small and work my way up to it, right?

This entire post is basically just a brain dump for me to stick with this and not get frustrated. I am going in the right direction, and I am better than I was two months ago. 

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Sometimes, you just gotta roll with it.

I only semi-tracked my points this weekend. And I'm okay with that.

When I commit to something, I have a tendency to get a bit anal with it, and this weekend helped to remind me that sometimes I just need to play it by ear and go with the flow when it comes to my eating.

I went to lunch with a friend yesterday and while I knew I was going to use some of my extra points, I wasn't counting on this:

I was near a Wegman's. We don't have one in my town; this one is about 45 minutes away and I rarely get a chance to go there. 

Now, I LOVE grocery stores. Seriously. I love food, I love cooking, I love shopping for food. So Wegman's is like Disneyland to me. And the prepared food section? Lord have mercy.

I ended up getting a few sushi rolls (California Roll and Spicy Coconut Shrimp) as well as a Spicy Shrimp Spring Roll, and ended up having them for dinner.

And you know what? I am totally fine with that. I was over my points yesterday, but I had some stuff that I don't normally get to have, and it certainly won't be a regular occurrence.

Today I was within my points and I did a short walking exercise video and spent a good 20 minutes stretching and doing crunches and pushups. 

It's kind of weird how once you start exercising, you feel really good about it. I really hope I can keep it up.