Lost it...

I weighed 199 lbs when I first started this journey. I know for a fact it was 199 because I swore I would not go over 200lbs!!! I weighed myself everyday and I would fluctuate but it never went over 200. Then one day I saw a picture of myself at a baseball game with my boyfriend at the time. I was disgusted with myself. I know that disgusted is a little harsh, so I would like to say I was disappointed with myself, but that would be the understatement of the year. I really was disgusted. I had always struggled with my weight but this was the heaviest I had ever been and seeing what 199lbs looked like was not OK with me. That was a turning point in my life. I didn't know what it was like to be fit or skinny, but that is what I wanted. It was like a switch had been flipped and it was all down hill from there. The weight just melted off. I realized later that I was not exactly going about it in a healthy manner, but at the time I was loosing weight so whatever I was doing I was going to keep doing. Shortly after I started loosing the weight, the guy that was in the baseball photo with me..., the guy I had been dating on and off for almost ten years, and I had ended things. This time it was for good. This only helped in the weight loss journey. It helped for a couple reasons; first, of course it is easy to loose a few pounds when you end a relationship...when you don't even feel like eating. Second, because I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Although I loved him more than I could even try to put into words, I knew it wasn't going to workout. It had been almost ten years and yet our relationship didn't seem to be going anywhere. I finally felt like I could move on and start over! and third I wanted to loose the weight so he would see me and realize what he was missing out on! lol I realize now those are stupid reasons but at the time they seemed to be helping. Ironically those are some of the same reasons that will eventually lead to my demise (I will explain that in the finding it part! lol)

   A few month after our break up I decided I needed a fresh start in a new environment so I transferred to a university in Virginia. While I was there I met a few people who would be key in helping me on my journey. One of whom helped me realize that I wasn't going about things in a healthy way. I knew what I was doing but I don't know if I was in denial or if I genuinely didn't know it was wrong and technically could be labeled as an eating disorder, but none the less I realized what I was doing was wrong and I tried to fix the problem. In the end this also played a part in my gaining the weight back. Some of my roommates were also key to my weight loss. One especially was Lindsay, we even took a weight lifting class together! Our coach was always so proud of us because he would come in to the weight room and there were all of the huge football player...and then there were these two prissy girls bench pressing!!! And we loved every minute of it!!!

   In the end, I had gotten down to under 150lbs! I had lost over 50lbs! I felt so good at the time. I felt healthy and fit. Although I didn't look like I was going to win any bench press competitions, I had some definition in my arms that I was extremely proud of. I have more pictures of myself from that time than any other time in my life and I know it was because I actually liked what I saw. This is one of those pictures. I still have one of these pictures as my profile picture on facebook and sometimes I feel bad about that because I feel like I am deceiving people making them think that is what I look like today, but I can't bring myself to change it. For one thing because I am embarrassed, but for another thing is because I feel that is who I am. I never felt better than I did then. I feel like I am that person trapped in this body.

   Then one day my weight loss journey came to an end. I made the HUGE mistake of getting my my body fat tested. It came out to be 33%. I knew that a healthy body fat ppercentage was lower than that so I felt like I had failed. I felt like I had done all that work for nothing. Like it wasn''t enough. Like it wasn't ever going to be enough. I was never going to be skinny! I realize now how dumb I was to think that. I realize how happy I was and I would give anything to be that size again. But at the time I was extremely discouraged by it. My friend realized that there was something wrong with me so I told her what I had found out and how I felt about it. I never thought, that how I felt about myself could effect someone else or their self esteem is such a way. She was overweight and I knew that, and I knew she knew it, and I also knew that it bothered her. But the difference was I measured my self worth by my weight...and I wasn't good enough, but I didn't measure her worth by her weight. She was beautiful and even at a heavier weight than me I still considered her more beautiful than myself. Therefore I never would have imagined that my insensitivity would be taken as, if I at 33% body fat thought I was fat, then what did that say about her! I felt extremely horrible about how I made her feel, and it made me feel even worse about myself because I was so superficial.

   This was the beginning of the end. It was like, when you get a pull in a rug or a sweater, and it just keeps unraveling more and more. That switch that had been flipped, had just been turned off. The next thing I know I am 225lbs! Yep so much for refusing to go over 200lbs!