Opening Embarrassment, Day One

I want to look like a normal woman.

I resemble a woman, currently, but like a grotesquely exaggerrated woman, in a way. I have the biggest ass I have ever seen, ever. Ever. I have no idea what happened.

My body has been holding me back for almost my whole life. When I was a freshman in college I decided to do away with the ten to fifteen extra pounds I had always carried, so I starved myself for 2-3 months. I lost it. That's the only time I have been truly tiny. Maybe 110. Of course I relapsed with a vengeance, and my sophomore year saw my weight climb just over 200 for the first time. I started healthfully losing weight about a year later, but relapsed upon moving back to Atlanta. I went back down to about 140 when I was 24 for my wedding, but jumped back to about 220 in about 18 months' time. Since that time I have fluctuated between 205 and 265 in a neverending, ever repeating cycle of weight loss, dieting, exercising, and relapse. Always. Never maintaining. Ever.

I am five feet, three and a half inches tall.

There are psychological reasons at play that I am just tired of thinking about. Even that has become a cycle. I will have a breakthrough realization, such as "I realized marrying my husband had been a mistake, I was no longer attracted to him, so I was gaining weight on a subliminal level as a means of repulsing him.". Yeah, depressing. Desperate, I know. But when I have this kind of realization, it feels like the proverbial lightbulb, and I feel some relief. I often feel a little excitement, as if figuring out the cause of my prior behavior will help me prevent it from happening again in the future. It does not. I get a little excited and lose a few pounds with a clearer mind. Then I realize it's meaningless and gain it back, plus one.

I have been morbidly obese for 12 years straight. I was yo-yoing between morbidly obese and normal for six years prior to that. This represents my entire adult life; before that I was a child. I count myself lucky that as a 37-year-old woman with this health history my only chronic problem is some mild hypertension, leftover from my second pregnancy. I don't know; there may also be issues with my heart. I am lucky to not have asthma and diabetes. Especially since I have been a smoker most of that same time period. Hell, I'm lucky to be alive, frankly, with the potential for damage I have posed my body.

So, for maybe the sixth time, I quit smoking four weeks ago today. I actually really feel like it is permanent this time, which is nice. This is not about smoking, but smoking and weight problems (of both the over- and under- kind) have a pretty complicated relationship. Of course, it is hard to think about how much good I am doing for my health when I gain 15 pounds in 4 weeks on a frame that clearly cannot handle it!

But I mention smoking because of the new attitude I have about it. I am wondering if I can somehow adapt the same attitude to fit my weight loss struggle. My feeling currently about smoking is simply, "No. You can't do that any more. You have two tiny children who depend on you, and will continue to do so for at least the next 25 years or so. It costs a fortune and is idiotic. No. " There is a finality to it. I've been looking at my eating habits, trying to determine if I can do something similar. Exercise is called for to assist with about 45 different issues I'm having at the moment, but it IS something additional. It's not something you can cut like smoking, nor is it something you HAVE to do to live, like eating. I mean yes, to some degree, you need to exercise to live well or live long. What I'm saying is it's been over a year and I'm still standing. Kind of. You can't not eat for a year.

I just want to be done with this.

I don't want to fail again. Sometimes it keeps me from even trying.

I want to look like a normal woman.

Written Tuesday, July 14, 2009 while eating reese's miniatures and drinking a diet coke