How I Got Like This

It's fair of you to wonder how I wound up weighing 251 pounds. Even if you struggle with weight yourself, it's easy to look at somebody bigger than yourself and say, "How does somebody let themselves get like that? I never will!"

Well, it certainly didn't happen all at once. I gain (and lose) weight in spurts, like 30 pounds at a time.

I was a normal size when I was a child. I grew up when kids still played outside and my parents didn't keep much junk food in the house (with one or two exceptions I may discuss later). And when I was 8, my whole family joined karate, so we were all plenty active.

Until...

When I was about 13, a whole bunch of life changes happened all at once. Within the span of about a year, we dropped out of karate, moved across town, moved to within walking distance of a convenience store, my brother and I got more freedom during the day, and I hit puberty.

Over the course of that year, I went from a girls' size 14 to a misses' size 14.

I started high school weighing about 140 pounds.

I've always been shy to begin with, but heading into high school at 140 pounds, I certainly didn't have any self esteem. Luckily, I did somehow manage to make a handful of friends, so I wasn't totally alone.

Every year that went by, I gained a few more pounds. Dating was out of the question; guys wouldn't even look at me, and I was far too shy to actually talk to anybody.

On graduation day, I weighed 203 pounds.

I was horrified. I had spent most of my junior and senior year hovering around 180-185, but something about crossing the 200-pound mark was just dreadful.

Luckily for me, instead of gaining the "Freshman 15" when I started college, I actually lost weight. I think it's partly due to walking so much more than in high school, but I'm also sort of a closet eater, and I didn't want my roommates to see just how much crap I was eating, so I cut back a little bit. Plus, instead of being a high school kid with a part-time job, suddenly I was in school full-time and relying on savings, so I couldn't afford to eat as much junk.

Anyway, I hung around 185 pounds for several years. I met a guy online, and we lived together off and on for several years, but mostly my weight stayed around that 185 mark. After we broke up for good, I joined a gym and maxed out my credit card on a personal trainer. I lost about 20 pounds and was feeling great - until I got REALLY sick. I think that's the time I got pneumonia. I'm really prone to upper respiratory infections; sometimes it's (walking) pneumonia, sometimes bronchitis, sometimes an unknown virus.

Anyway, I stopped working out and gained the weight back. I went back to about 185 and hung out there for a while.

I had been diagnosed with depression in college and was on antidepressants occasionally, but a few years ago I was diagnosed as being bipolar.

Unfortunately, all the bipolar drugs have weight gain as a side effect.

So then I went up to about 220 and hovered around there for a while.

I've suffered from several terrible depressive episodes the last few years, and being depressed always makes me crave even more junk food and less inclined to do any sort of exercise. One year ago, I weighed 240 pounds.

I hit a breaking point and finally joined Weight Watchers. One of my coworkers had started it and was doing really well with it. So I started the Weight Watchers and lost about 20 pounds.

Then I hit another depressive episode. A BIG one. And between the depression and the new bipolar med, I ballooned up to 245.

I started to feel better over the summer, and my weight stabilized. The last month or so, however, I've been feeling depressed again and eating more.

And that is how I wound up at 251 pounds.

Part of the reason I am depressed is because of my weight, so putting forth an effort into losing weight will kill two birds with one stone.

I'm just tired of living like this. I'm tired of my back hurting all the time. I'm tired of wondering if a restaurant booth will be big enough. I'm tired of spilling food all over myself when I eat because my huge gut prevents me from bending over and getting closer to my food, and everything that falls off the fork lands on my belly rather than the plate, table, or even my lap. I don't have much of a lap left anyway.

I'm tired of feeling like I never want another person to see me naked. I'm tired of feeling like I'll be alone the rest of my life. I'm tired of feeling like some freak of nature that doesn't fit into movie theater or airplane seats very well.

But mostly...

I'm tired of being tired. The effort of living like this has to be greater than the effort it will take to lose the weight. I probably need to lose around 100 pounds, maybe more. So I think about carrying 100 pounds in a backpack or something and how good it would feel to take it off and put it down.

This will not be an easy journey, and I will need all the help I can get. That is why I am starting this blog, so I can be held accountable for my actions. If I fall off the wagon, any regular readers I acquire will know, either because I tell you or because I stop posting.

So thank you just for reading. Every person that reads this helps to hold me accountable. In theory, I should be held accountable to myself, but it's much easier to be held accountable by a bunch of strangers.

As always, comments are always welcome, and thanks for reading!