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I'm creating this journal to document my weight-loss journey. After living in this body for 24 years, I'm carrying with me all the cream pies and blocks of cheese and gummy bears and deep-fried-everything I've eaten for two dozen years. Now I'm really ready to shed this version of myself and rise like a Phoenix from the ashes, whole and healed.
I've been a vegetarian for about 4 years, but even ditching the chicken strips and bacon cheeseburgers didn't do me any good because I traded them for an addiction to cheese and fried foods. The only vegetables I ate were jalepeno poppers and french fries, and every meal consisted of some sort of cheese product and ranch dressing/mayonnaise/something extraordinarily fattening and bad for me. It's not that I didn't know that I was eating badly--it just seemed like, even if I adjust my diet, what's the point? I'm too far gone. Plus, exercise just seems so hopeless that I was able to tell myself it just wasn't worth it to try.
One month ago, I weighed 245 lbs. In case you're not aware, that's a LOT for a 5'7" female. I'll eventually post some pictures, but to give you an idea, I'll run down the list of the physical appearance-wise implications of my unhealthy lifestyle:
On my face, my eyelids are puffy from fat, which gives me a slightly hooded appearance (and means I have to wear more eyeshadow just to make it show up). My cheeks have always been chubby, and I have a bit of a crease from my outer nostrils to my smile lines as a result of the cheek fat hanging down, bull-dog style. My double chin bothers me a lot, mainly because I like to think that I don't have a 'fat face,' but it's hard to disguise a pound or two of extra flab sloping from my chin to my chest. I don't have a jawline at all, and my ears sometimes look to me like they're starting to get buried in fat, much like sunken buttons on an over-stuffed couch.
My arms are flabby from top to bottom, with an overhang at each elbow where gravity has taken ahold of my skin and tugged it down. By my armpits, I have little 'second boobs' in the front, which show when I wear a tank top.
My back has rolls along the side all the way down, and I never got a lower back tattoo because of the folds. Even the top of my back is dimpled and squishy, and chock-full-o-cellulite when I push my shoulder blades together.
My ass is, of course, a mess, complete with sagging, cellulite, and an entirely unattractive scar from a couple bouts with my pilonidal cyst (caused by, you guessed it, obesity!). The cyst scars are pretty ugly, and a reminder of the worst pain I've ever experienced. If you've never had a pilonidal cyst, you can't even imagine the pain, the embarrassment, and the total, er, grossness of the whole thing. It's caused primarily by fat peoples' ass cheeks rubbing together, trapping a hair in there which worms its way under the skin and causes a terribly painful infection which tunnels, grows, and fills up with this disgusting brownish-reddish-whitish bloody pus that smells vaguely like turkey salad mixed with ass. When it ruptures after a week or two of agony, it becomes an 'anal volcano' at the top of your crack and splatters everything around you with the stinking reminder of what bad eating and no exercise can do to your poor body.
Below that is the crease between my butt-sag and my thighs, which regularly flares up with zits and ingrown hairs from the rubbing and, of course, the sweat which seems to always accompany obesity.
My legs are trunks. My thighs spread out about a foot across when I sit down, and the insides of my thighs are riddled with zits, blackheads, boils, and pock-marks from past breakouts, caused, again, by rubbing and sweating. Ride the ripples down to my knees, which are flanked by those unsexy side bags on each side, and are topped with an overhang of hard-packed fat. My calves are so big, I've never been able to find boots or knee-high tights to over them. I was a catcher for years in softball, so they're beefed up with bulky muscles and covered with a layer of blubber. My ankles are thick, and my feet are deformed, complete with bunions and flat-footedness thanks to hauling around 245 lbs in cute shoes.
The worst part, in my opinion, is my stomach. I can't wear fitted shirts because I have a crease all the way around, right along my belly button area. The top part sticks out like a pregnant belly, then dips about 3 inches in at my belly button, then back out, and then hangs down like a fanny-pack over my pubic hair. Under this horrible 'second stomach' is raw, red skin that gets even redder and more raw when it's hot out or I'm having sex, and feels like the delicate skin is going to tear. I have some bluish-purple lines and crevices, but managed to avoid any really cosmetically bad stretch marks. Even when I do lose weight, it's my stomach that I'm worried about because I don't know if it will ever stretch back after so many years of hanging down.
After reading all of that, I'm sure you're probably picturing some sort of hag, but that's only half correct--even with the extra hundred pounds of lard I have strapped around my person, I'm not hideous. As long as I keep my clothes on.
However, my motives for losing weight aren't purely superficial. I hate not being able to run up the stairs of my house without gasping for breath at the top. I hate worrying on roller coasters that the safety bar won't push all the way down. I hate taking pictures of myself and having to only take a face shot, neck craned, low light, and down angle just to hide my fat. I hate not being able to find anything to wear for work in the morning. I hate the thought of becoming diabetic like all the other heavy women in my family. I hate worrying if I have 'fat girl smell.' I hate avoiding the doctor's office because I know they're going to weigh me. I hate the fact that I can't even exercise on the walking trail by my house because I'm embarrassed about my panting and sweating. There are a million reasons I want to lose weight.
Nearly every time I've wished on a star or prayed to God for anything since I was in middle school, all I asked for was to lose weight.
Every time I walk into a room, I try to gauge wether or not I'm the fattest girl there. I don't even like sex thanks to a particularly cruel ex-boyfriend because of what my partner will surely find under my clothes.
I tried Trim-Spa, I tried Dr. Phil. I sweated to the Oldies, I let Billy Blanks talk me through Tae-Bo. I starved myself, I went on uppers so I'd eat less. I did the Atkins thing before I stopped eating meat, and somehow survived on bacon, cheese, and sugar-free jell-o for months on end. Nothing worked, and if it did work, it wasn't sustainable.
So here I am.
Last month (July 10th, to be exact--today is August 4th) I started a "weight loss challenge" with some coworkers, and I weighed in at 245. I sucked up my humiliation at stepping on the scale in front of my peers, and thus began a true lifestyle change.
I had to cut out the full-fat cheeses, and replaced them with fat-free or reduced-fat. I was eating cheese for, seriously, every meal (except breakfast, of course, which I almost always skipped) so that was the biggest challenge. I've been letting myself have full-fat cheese only occasionally, and eating that in moderation. I even made lasagna with fat-free cheese, and it turned out delicious.
I've had to also start forcing myself to eat vegetables, which has proven to be less difficult than I thought. Even though I'm a vegetarian, I FREAKIN HATED vegetables. Now I try to have some for every lunch and dinner.
I cut back on salt, fat, and sugar. Sugar was hard, because I have a really bad sweet tooth. I was constantly eating candy and felt like no meal was complete without dessert. Now I have fruit or a pudding cup for dessert, if anything.
I've had to start eating breakfast, which was hard to get used to. And not just any breakfast...nope, no Croisandwich or McGriddle for me. Just light yogurt or bran flakes with berries.
My girlfriend and I live together, so I've dragged her into my healthy eating lifestyle, and she's contributed with some great tofu creations and encouragement.
The hardest part, hands down, is trying to exercise. I try to force myself to get up when my gf goes to work at 6am so I can work out, then shower, eat breakfast, make a healthy lunch, and get to work on time. However, it's much easier said than done.
I went from a lifestyle of staying up late into the night drinking, then getting up with about 20 minutes to get dressed and run out of the door. I would eat a morning snack from the vending machine, get a fatty lunch from somewhere out, then come home and gorge myself all evening until I started drinking again.
Now, I try to go to bed by 10 or 11, get up early, prepare food for the day, and then after work make a light snack (or my gf has fried tofu waiting for me) while we plan a healthy dinner to eat, making sure we're done with dinner at least 2 hours before bed.
This is really a lifestyle change and not just a diet. I'm TIRED of being fat! Seriously! I'm ready to make a change. I'm no longer going to allow myself to put this off. My grandmother is nearly 400 lbs and can barely get around--I don't even remember the last time I saw her in pants. My mom is well on her way, and I'm headed down the same road.
I know it's going to be the most challenging thing I've ever done, but I'm making a committment to lose weight. My hope is that this journal will serve as a way to track my weight, my eating and exercise habits, and my general thoughts and feelings about my changing body and this great journey I'm about to begin.
I'll keep you posted :)

Beginning weight: July 10, 245 lbs.
Goal weight: 160 lbs. by Christmas

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