This is Why I'm Doing This

Okay. Deep breath. Here goes. The information I have never told anyone.

I am 5’9” and I weighed in at 228.2 pounds this morning (before my two gorge days). My BMI is 34.

That wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Much easier when it's anonymous.

According to Weight Watchers, this means my ideal weight should be between 135 and 169. If I take even the upper limit of my weight range, that means I have 59 pounds to lose. The bottom range seems patently absurd for a woman in her mid-thirties who has had two children, but what do I know?

The Sob Story 

I was a normal-weight kid who always felt fat. I was an early bloomer, meaning I was getting boobs in 4^th and 5^th grade, and by 8^th grade, I was a 36C with an hourglass figure. This did not make me feel sexy and powerful, it made me feet fat and ugly and weird. I bought my first pair of control top pantyhose in the 6^th grade and thought it was the best invention ever.

I was a size 12/14 through most of high school—not skinny, but not really fat for a tall girl. But I felt fat. Any time the boy I liked didn’t like me back, I was sure it was because of my weight. It never once crossed my mind that it could be anything else.

I started binge eating in earnest in high school because I made my own money and could spend it on food. I stole food when I babysat and hid the candy wrappers in the trash. Our next-door neighbor used to buy the huge, Costco-sized boxes of mini Peppermint Patties, and I could eat 20 or 30 in a sitting. I would eat alone, feeling disgust and shame almost the whole time.

I started the Slim Fast plan, but it gave me the runs. I tried jogging, but I had asthma, a part-time job, and all honors/AP classes. It was easy to let myself off the hook.

I lost weight my freshman year of college because I was depressed and ate only strawberry popsicles in the dining hall. I got down to probably 150-155 at my lowest. I would go a day or more without eating until I felt so sick I could only stomach a few sips of juice. I was secretly proud of my resolve, and I loved it when people (my mother, my friends) would yell at me to eat more. I felt I was finally a success. But I didn't really feel any thinner or smaller.

My sophomore year, some Bad Shit happened that began a long and steady weight gain. I would skip meals in the dining hall all together and eat a whole bag of Rolos for lunch and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s for dinner. I ate sweets until I felt nauseous almost every day. I always hid the evidence by burying the wrappers deep in the trash can.

I got fatter and fatter and hardly noticed. I was young, and so the fat was nice and plump—no stretch marks, no striations, not too many unseemly rolls. My boyfriend seemed to like me the way I was. It’s not that I didn’t feel fat; I did. But then I always felt fat, ever since fourth grade. It was just that I didn’t feel any fatter than I ever had before, even though I was. I've always been so out of touch with my body that I could never tell weight gain or loss except by the scale--isn't that screwed up? So if I'm not weighing myself, I can easily be in uneasy denial.

After graduating from college, I went on a three-month road trip with some college friends. My boyfriend’s mother bought me Lane Bryant clothes for the vacation, and I was mortified that she thought I needed them. I thought it was some passive-aggressive dig at me.  I went on the vacation and wore the size 18 shirts and shorts she had bought me, truly believing it was some kind of fluke that they actually fit me.

When I got the pictures back, I was horrified. There was no denying that I was officially, undeniably Fat.

That Fall, just before Thanksgiving, I started Weight Watchers. I weighed in at 231 pounds and was an 18/20.

Over the next year, I lost 50 pounds, and stabilized at around 180-190 for 2-3 years. It didn’t feel terribly difficult to maintain in terms of self-denial or hunger, but I thought about food all the time and still couldn’t get to my officially sanctioned WW goal weight of 169.

I quick smoking and gained 15 pounds, then lost it again.

I finally got treated for anxiety and depression (therapy and Wellbutrin), and was able to beg, borrow, and steal my way down to 170 just in time to get married. At the time, I felt I still had a ways to go; I was not satisfied. But when I look at my wedding pictures, I see a healthy, attractive woman who is at a perfectly reasonable weight.

But 170 never felt like a maintainable weight for me, and I gained 10 pounds on my honeymoon. Again, I stayed at around 180-190 for half a year until I got pregnant the first time. Although the first pregnancy ended in miscarriage at 9 weeks, I had already gained 15 pounds from eating every carbohydrate in sight to help relieve my nausea. I got pregnant again right away and gained 60 pounds. I was 260 pounds when I went in to deliver my daughter.

Thirty pounds came off right after delivery, but I was knocked over with postpartum depression, and the Zoloft I begrudgingly started taking caused me to put 20 back on. I hovered around 240-250 for the first two years of my daughter’s life. I switched meds, started working out, got down to 221 . . . and got pregnant again unexpectedly. The second baby was a wonderful surprise gift but set me way back on my path to healthy eating and weight loss.

I know no one really cares about these vicissitudes in weight but me. I guess I’m sharing them partially because I am drunk with power (I’ve never shared my weight with anyone before) and partially to show how much this has been a daily struggle and a daily effort since puberty. For all the people who say "why don't you just eat less and exercise more," I guess I want you to know I've tried that. I promise I've tried.

Just before my second child turned two, I trained for my first 5k and got stress fractures in my shins and a heel spur. I spent six months healing from that and then started Jillian Michael’s aggressive exercise plan. Over the last 15 months, I lost 18 pounds with intense, intense effort. After I hurt my ankle, I kept it off easily for three months and then put on 8 pounds in two weeks.

So here I am. I’m almost 35. I am 5’9” and weigh 228, as much as many professional football players. Last week in my office, someone was describing a huge, giant, bear of a man. “You don’t get it,” this colleague told me, stretching their arms out to indicate incredible girth. “This guy is, like, 6’2” and 240 pounds. He’s a beast.”

I guess that makes me 12 pounds shy of beastliness.

On a regular basis, my husband describes the amazing and unbelievable weight of this or that athlete. He spouts off these statistics with ease and awe, and I am always secretly comparing their weight to mine in my mind. I can’t even ask him to stop or tell him that it humiliates me, because I don't want him to know how much I weigh. What would I say? It is oddly comforting that people feel so comfortable marveling at 200lb+ weights in front of me; it means they don’t think it could possibly apply to me. Maybe I have people fooled that I am only a little fat, when in fact, I am a beast. Sorry, I mean 12 pounds shy of being a beast.

I’m so tired of it. I am just plain tired. I truly feel like I have tried the conventional ways. I have. I have given this the old college try. I feel completely desperate, almost desperate enough to try anything. I am well aware that I have brought this on myself.

I don’t think this diet is for someone who hasn’t struggled for awhile. I don’t think this diet is for someone who wants to lose 10 pounds. I don't think this diet is for people who haven't tried the other healthy, reasonable eating plans. And I don’t think this diet is an ideal eating plan in ideal conditions. I think that it is lovely and responsible to eat less and exercise more and safely lose a pound a week until you reach your goal weight.

I would do it that way if I could.