When I was fifteen, my doctor prescribed me an appetite suppressant and I lost 45 lbs. in just a little more than two months. I went from wearing a 22/24 to a 14/16, which meant I could actually wear clothes for someone my age. I'd spent most of my life in dresses and bathing suits because nothing else really fit my ever-growing, plump body. Don't get me wrong - I love dresses and bathing suits. I just also wanted to wear what the other kids wore: jeans, shorts, skirts and tee shirts.
Once I lost some of the extra weight, I bought my first pair of jeans - Levis 501s - and stepped into the 21st century of fashion. It was a great moment for me, and I still have those jeans. I don't know that I'll ever be able to wear them again, but I certainly hope so (or that if I can't, it's because they are too BIG).
I lost the weight. I looked good and I felt good. So why did I gain it plus a hippo's worth of weight back? I'd love to say it was because of someone else, that I was kidnapped by little elves who force-fed me Twinkies and Frosted Flakes. But no one else is to blame but me. I thought my life would become drastically different when I lost weight. I thought I'd finally be the girl the guys wanted to date, instead of the girl that constantly got friend-zoned. I thought that people I loved would love me more if I were thin and that somehow everything bad in my life would be better. It was most certainly a bad case of magical thinking because not a single one of those things happened.
I did get some attention from guys, but it was usually the wrong kind of attention or from the wrong guys. In fact, at 15, I was stalked by a guy I simply said "hi" to in our local grocery store. It was a very scary thing to deal with, and thankfully our local police department took care of the problem before it got out of control. I dated some icky guys who liked how I looked in my jeans but didn't care about the brain in my head. I did meet a guy that I completely fell for, but I wasn't a match for him the way he was for me. Yet again, I was put in the friend zone.
Then, my parents went through a tough divorce; and well, our lives completely changed. There was family drama like there always is in those kinds of situations and I probably could've handled it better. Instead, I chose to eat buckets of KFC. That's right. BUCKETS. The weight loss didn't matter. It didn't change anything. I was still teased for not being a stick-figure like so many other girls my age, and I was still just good enough to be the friend - not the girlfriend.
So I started eating and I didn't stop. Food didn't fight me. Food didn't tell me I was fat or ugly. Food didn't ridicule me for eating more than my share. Food didn't tell me it just wanted to be friends. Food was comfort in every sense of the word.
Now, I find myself tipping the scale at over 400 lbs and food is no longer just the source of comfort. It is the hole I crawled into that I can't seem to find my way out of. And no matter how much I want to lose weight and eat right (I absolutely LOVE vegetables), I find reasons not to. Here are just a few of the questions that make it so easy for me to keep stuffing my face:
What if I lose weight and nothing changes?
Or, what if like before, things DO change but for the worse?
What if I lose weight and I look ugly?
What about the excess skin? I'm 300 pounds overweight, so I am definitely going to have excess skin no matter what I do. I can't afford plastic surgery, and thinking about carrying around flabby skin of epic proportions scares the vanity in me to death.
What if I don't feel better when I lose weight?
What if I can't handle life without stuffing myself until I'm physically uncomfortable?
What if the damage is already done and I lose weight only to find myself in need of knee replacements and heart surgery in ten years?
Some people think that losing weight is about eating right and working out. For me, it's about finding a way past the "What ifs...?" to a place where food is only fuel and nothing more. The one thing I am learning every day of this journey is this: losing weight doesn't start on your plate or at your gym; it starts in your mind.