ocd
*possible ED trigger warning*
I can’t say I remember a time when I wasn’t on a weight loss journey of some sort.
There isn’t a lot of my childhood that I remember, but I DO remember not being happy about how I looked.
My mother often told people that when I was first born she was worried that I wouldn’t be able to open my eyes because my cheeks were so very chubby. She also expressed concern about how I could possibly be able to start to walk with those pudgy legs.
I can’t say I remember a time when I wasn’t on a weight loss journey of some sort.
There isn’t a lot of my childhood that I remember, but I DO remember not being happy about how I looked.
My mother often told people that when I was first born she was worried that I wouldn’t be able to open my eyes because my cheeks were so very chubby. She also expressed concern about how I could possibly be able to start to walk with those pudgy legs.
I’ve seen in pictures that I did at one point lose the baby fat. I’d say I was probably around 3 years old or so. I’ve seen in the photos that I am what I would consider a “normal” sized child.
I don’t remember ever feeling “normal sized” and it certainly didn’t last for very long.
I don’t remember ever feeling “normal sized” and it certainly didn’t last for very long.
It didn’t help that I considered myself a homely child even before the weight gain. I was a beautiful baby. All big brown eyes and golden curls and of course those chubby cheeks.
Somehow that didn’t translate well out of toddlerhood. My hair got straight and turned a mousy brown color and well, I’ve always had resting bitch face.
Genetics were not in my favor when it came to being heavy. My mother and father were big as far as weight was concerned. Mom was petite in all other ways as she was only 4’11”. They must have made a funny looking couple as my dad was 6 feet tall, but I don’t ever remember it being an issue. Truth be told, they had many more things not in common to be worried about.
I don’t know my genetics on my fathers side beyond my grandmother and aunt and neither of them were very big. My father wasn’t either until he got married and “settled down”. He probably gained the weight as a matter of no longer being active and eating out of boredom. I remember him also quitting smoking early in my childhood and that he put on some serious pounds after that. There was always tons of candy around the house to help him quit and I delighting in that fact.
So I was a round child and it just got worse after my father left for the first time when I was ten. My mother tried to make up for the fact that he wasn’t a part of the family anymore by rewarding us with food.
He came back for a spell and then left again for the final time when I was 12. That was when junk and fast food moved from being a reward to being a necessity when my mother had to start working two jobs to support us and try and keep the house.
Late evening happy meals from McDonald’s were not unusual as it was just easier and most times cheaper for my mom to snag them on her way home from work, than to have to cook when she got home.
Our cupboards were stocked with chips, crackers, white bread and all other things starchy.
A favorite snack of mine was pretzel sticks covered in melted butter or wrapped in American cheese. Because my mom worked two jobs, there wasn’t really anyone around to police mine or my brothers eating choices. My grandparents lived right next door, so we were allowed to stay in our house by ourselves knowing that we could call one of them if we had any problems.
At fifteen we could no longer afford the house I grew up in, so we moved into a series of apartments. I remember briefly losing about fifteen or twenty pounds around that time mostly because we couldn’t really afford a lot of food. I was happy about the weight loss but obviously not the fact that I was hungry a lot of the time.
My mother did the best she could and I do not fault her for any of this.
I remained a “big girl” throughout high school.
After being told there weren’t even enough credits to earn to graduate with my class no matter what I did, I dropped out my senior year and started night school.
Somewhere around here I got into therapy and though it took me a couple of years it started to do me a world of good.
Around this time period I decided that being fat was no longer for me. Money wasn’t quite as desperate (though it went in ebbs and flows) at the time. I got an exercise bike for a gift and bought a portable stair stepper with my own money. I even got a small resistance band weight station at a garage sale.
Yours truly began to watch every single calorie that went into my mouth, never going above 1200-1500 calories a day and everything was low fat. In addition, since I didn’t work more than 15 hours a week, I started working out at least twice a day – sometimes three times.
Looking back it was horribly obsessive compulsive behavior that was just setting myself up for an inevitable eating disorder.
But boy did it work! The weight came off and I felt fantastic! For the first time that I could remember, I was wearing the latest fashions and they looked good!
I remained a “big girl” throughout high school.
After being told there weren’t even enough credits to earn to graduate with my class no matter what I did, I dropped out my senior year and started night school.
Somewhere around here I got into therapy and though it took me a couple of years it started to do me a world of good.
Around this time period I decided that being fat was no longer for me. Money wasn’t quite as desperate (though it went in ebbs and flows) at the time. I got an exercise bike for a gift and bought a portable stair stepper with my own money. I even got a small resistance band weight station at a garage sale.
Yours truly began to watch every single calorie that went into my mouth, never going above 1200-1500 calories a day and everything was low fat. In addition, since I didn’t work more than 15 hours a week, I started working out at least twice a day – sometimes three times.
Looking back it was horribly obsessive compulsive behavior that was just setting myself up for an inevitable eating disorder.
But boy did it work! The weight came off and I felt fantastic! For the first time that I could remember, I was wearing the latest fashions and they looked good!
I started to get a lot more attention from the opposite sex and even got a steady boyfriend for a few months until he cheated on me and I dumped his loser ass.
After that I sort of went on a use ’em and lose ’em tour de force for awhile and had a lot of fun.
Eventually the weight started to creep back up a little bit at a time. I decided for emotional reasons that I didn’t connect at the time that as long as what I ate didn’t “stay” in my body, I couldn’t gain weight from it!
Hello bulimia!
I’m not going to sing the praises of that particular period of my life. Mostly because I don’t like the idea of speaking positively about eating disorders. I might write about this chapter in my journey in another entry because it did have a major effect on my life.
Having said that, the full on bulimia lasted at least two years and consisted of throwing up everything I ate and also taking laxatives at night to get whatever else I missed out of my body.
The weight came off obviously.
Eventually I realized that I didn’t want to die and stopped. Of course it wasn’t that easy, but eventually I was able to stop the majority of the purging.
The binging on the other hand…
The binging on the other hand…
The weight piled back on with a vengeance. My metabolism was ZERO after not keeping any food in my body for years.
At age 25 I met my current husband and fell in love. I met him while on vacation and long story short, I ended up moving across the country to live with him. A year later, we married.
At age 25 I met my current husband and fell in love. I met him while on vacation and long story short, I ended up moving across the country to live with him. A year later, we married.
*to be continued*
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