My Name is Jennay & I Am Obese

If you know me, then you know that I have battled with weight for what seems like, all of my life.  I don't really remember what my weight was in high school, but I can tell you that I was in a size 18 when I graduated high school.  When I got married, I weighed 207.  When I had my first child, I weighed 227.  When I had my second child, I weighed in at a whopping 275.  I always told myself, as long as I don't weigh "X" amount, I'm okay.  Then I would hit that mark and set a new one, well, then as long as I don't hit "X", I'm okay....then once again, I would hit that mark, until the next thing I knew, I was 336 pounds and miserable.  I think what made it hit home for me, was when I had to go the doctor and he wrote in my file "morbidly obese female".  Those words made me cringe. 

How does one let themself get to the point of being morbidly obese?  Well, it's a number of things.  At least in my case. 
1) I'm an emotional eater.  I eat for every emotion that I have.  Depressed or happy....it involves eating.  I think that I gained most of my weight around the time my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Right after that, I got pregnant with baby #2, then my mom died shortly after my daughters birth, and instead of dealing with that, I just ate.......ate, ate, ate and then ate some more.
2) I like food....who doesn't, right?  My problem though, I don't think that I have that little thing in my head that knows how to tell my stomach, "um, hello.....you're full".....cause I would eat until I made myself sick.  Then there's the whole, I just ate something sweet, so now I need something salty, then I need something sweet again.  It's a vicious, vicious circle.
3)  Genetics....I don't think that it's genetically possible for me to be a size 4.  I'm thankful that genetics gave me my height of 5'9"....if I didn't have that, Lord knows that I would have rolling around like one of them little people in the Wizard of Oz.

Diet programs?  Oh, I did them.  When I was a teenager, I was so miserable with myself and had such low self esteem, that I downed a bunch of pills and attempted to end my life.  I know that probably seems drastic, but there was a lot more to that whole situation, too.  After getting my mind right about things as best as I could, my mother took me to Jenny Craig, I dieted, got down to a size 14, then put it all back on once I stopped eating their food, which was crazy expensive, to which my father reminded of every day that I was on it.  In those same teenage years, I would binge and then make myself throw up.  You probably think, binge, yeah right.  If you don't call going to Sonic and ordering a grilled cheese, extra long cheese coney, corndog, onion rings and fries, with two diet cokes (so that they wouldn't think it was all for one person), bingeing...then you need to go look up the definition of that word.  I even binged and purged during college.  As an adult, I tried Weight Watchers several times.  I did the Atkins diet.  I took diet pills.  I would watch my fat intake.  Yes, all of these worked...but then I gained it all back.  Then you finally get to a point, mine was 300 pounds, where you think...Jesus, it's useless.  There's no way I can lose this on my own.  That was MY thought.  I'm not saying that one can't lose 150 pounds on their own, I AM saying that I didn't think I could.  So once I hit that mac-daddy of 336 pounds, I looked into surgery.  Yep, that's right.  I was taking the "easy way out" as some people call it.  I was having the Lap-Band surgery, only it wasn't and still isn't, the easy way out.

June 2006 ~ Disney World.  One miserable Momma, ya hear?

The day I went in for surgery, I weighed 326.  That first week after surgery was okay....I had to stay on clear liquids, jello, broths.  But by the second week, I was thinking "what the hell have I done?"  I mean, food...it was my go to guy, it was what comforted me.  The whole process of not being able to turn to food everytime I was happy or sad, was a difficult one.  I could no longer have breads and pastas.  Chicken and meat were hard for me to get down.  I learned to survive on potatoes.  Six months later, I was down 45 pounds.  Just 45 pounds?  I thought, please don't let me be one of those women who can only lose 50 pounds with this and that's it.  One year passed and I was down 75 pounds.  Okay, so it was a lot slower than I had thought it should be, but that's okay I guess.  Eighteen months after surgery, I was down 100 pounds.  By this time, I've had a couple of friends who had the same surgery and lost weight and are in size 8's, but I'm still in a size 18?  How is this possible?  How can you lose 100 pounds and still wear a size 18?  But I couldn't let myself get depressed.  I had to remind myself that I used to wear a size 26.  Two years and 110 pounds gone.  Little did I know, but I was gonna start struggling at this point to get any more off of me.  August will make six years since my surgery and I have lost a total of 156 pounds.  For the last two years, I have gone back and forth with losing 10 pounds and then gaining them back.  My first goal was to reach 199.  I am proud to say that I'm 19 pounds under that. I haven't weighed under 200 pounds in over 13 years.  I honestly can't recall when I weighed under 200.

Now most women wouldn't tell a soul how much they weigh.  I was one of those women.  I guess the difference now is that I want people to know how far I've come.  I currently weigh 180.4 and wear a size 14, sometimes 12.  I can hear many gasps.  Some with a meaning of "Oh my God, I can't believe she just told everyone her weight and dress size", the other gasps meaning, "She's almost 200 pounds???  I would die of embarrassment".  Yes, that's right, I said I weigh 180 pounds.  I'm still on my journey of losing weight.  I'm dieting.  I'm exercising.  My goal is not to be a sack of bones.  My goal is not to be a size 6.  My ultimate goal is being able to go to the doctors office and for once, not having them write down "obese female".  When that day comes, I finally be satisfied with myself.





November 2011 - pay no mind to my mess of a closet....I had just done a happy dance that I got in a size 12 jeans.

 

December 2012, 174 pounds  BOOM.