6 Months Down...A Lifetime To Go

UPDATE: Well if you didn't think I was an idiot by now, this will seal the deal. I am not 6 month banded but I am 6 months on this jouney. I have lost 52 pounds since March 12th and 30 of those pounds since surgery. Sometimes I confuse myself. I knew I had been doing something for 6 months. :) Thanks CindyLew for the gentle correction.

So today is offically 6 months of living with the band. I am down 52 pounds. Woo Hoo!!!! I finally wrote out my long boring history with being overweight. You don't have to read it. I am warning you it is really long and I am not a great writer, but I needed to post it for me. I needed a record.

How do you chronicle a lifetime of being overweight? Where to you pin point the beginning? Is that even possible? I am not quite sure that it is so I am just going to say that I can never remember being skinny. Every memory I have of myself and weight is unpleasant, for lack of a better word. I grew up with an older sister who was skinny like a rail. She was one of those size 0’s that could (and did) eat ice cream for breakfast and never gain a pound. In fact there was a time when, my parent’s goal was to get her to gain some weight. So needless to say, I always compared myself to her…and I take no pleasure in the fact that she struggles with her weight now…well…maybe a little.
I won’t bore you with the countless stories from Jr. High. Like the time I refused to go on a church ski trip because they needed your weight for some obscure purpose (still don’t know why), but at that time I was 13 years old and weighed 179 lbs. Or the time that I had to call my mom to pick me up because the zipper in my jeans had split because they were so tight.

December 1994 - Fall of junior year

Spring of my junior year in high school rolled around and my mom decided she was going to take me to a doctor. I had done all the diets you can think of with no luck. This doctor had this brand new program that my mom had heard about so she forked over the money, we went to the seminar and I started taking phentermine. You know, the safe half of Phen-Phen. :) I stopped eating and sleeping and I was a raging bitch. My parents had to force me to eat once they figured out what was going on but strangely they didn’t tell me to stop taking the pills. I dropped from a 22/24 down to a 12. The skinniest I can ever remember myself. Probably weighed close to what I did when I was 13 and felt huge. Funny how that works.

(At one of my Graduation Parties)

(Senior Picture...so serious, I was such a drama queen)

I left for college at a size 14. Stopped taking the pills because I wasn’t able to see the doctor on a regular basis and couldn’t get the prescription filled. Freshmen 15 and then some found me. I can remember one time I weighed myself my junior year and I was at 227. I was horrified that I had gotten to this point…again, but didn’t/wasn’t able to do anything about it. I wonder if it had something to do with all the beer I had in the fridge. :) Graduated at a size 22. Moved back to Dallas and got a job teaching 3rd grade. I was so excited and really loved what I was doing but my weight was still an issue. It got in the way of everything, but mainly my self confidence was just about nill. So one night, I was home and really depressed about the way my life was going, so I got on the internet and started looking for my good friend phentermine. Hey, it worked before, why not again?

(This was February 2001 at my cousin's 30th birthday party)

Lost down to a size 16. Felt pretty good about myself. This was spring/summer 2001.

Kept that off for about 2 years and then gained to a size 20. In 2004, I started running…a lot. And it was wonderful. One of my friends would run with me and we are/were pretty competitive. If she said she had run 4 miles that day and I had only run 3 I would go out and run another mile and a half just so I could say I had run more, and she would do the same. I was down to a 9 minute mile. I was doing one 5K a month. The weight loss was slow during this time but my body felt soooo good. I gained some confidence, started dating again but only really made it to a size 16 but I didn’t care! I felt great! The lowest I remember my weight being during this time was 196. It had been so long since I had seen a number in the 100’s I could barely believe it. It didn’t last very long but I was definitely happy during this time in my life.

(At my college roomates bachelorette party)

Summer of 2006 my father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Plus which looks like Parkinson’s but isn’t. It is hard to explain but basically the automatic functions of his body are slowly degenerating and basically you treat symptoms to maintain quality of life but will not be able to stop the progression. This was devastating to our family (and still is). So how does one cope with this? Eat…and eat I did. I had also quit smoking and spending money because I had made a goal to be credit card debt free. (Which I am now, woo hoo!) So two of my vices that I had relied on when I cut out the bad eating were suddenly gone and I was in crisis.
And on top of all that, my running buddy got married and moved to Ohio, I was in year two of grad school, and had moved from a classroom position to a support position. Lots of changes. So the weight started to come back. I tried a few last ditch efforts, including a $2000 program through the Cooper Clinic, but never got the results I wanted. I became assistant principal one year later, and then principal a year after that. All very fast and very stressful. So that brings me to my all time high of 313 lbs on March 5th, 2010.

(That's me on the far left. I cropped my big old butt out of the picture before I sent it out to the staff)

Wow! If you are still reading you deserve a prize. This was kind of the drive by version but it is done and I can now let it go, move on and embrace this new way of life. With the help of my band I am never going back there again.

I can't wait to see what the next 6 months will bring.

PS - I can't believe I am publishing this...