A subject I have been reluctant to delve in to is my struggle with weight loss/weight management.  It is something I have fought with my entire life, and it is an issue I grapple with on a daily basis.  However, I haven’t been able to bring myself to blog about it.  After giving it much consideration, I realize that it’s because it is so embarrassing for me.  Believe it or not, I have no qualms writing about my periods and breast feeding, but addressing my constant struggle with my weight is imaginable…until today!  I have decided that if I truly want to blog about my daily life, and be honest with my readers about my struggles, then weight loss has to be a topic I address.  After all, I cannot be the only woman in the world dealing with these feelings….so here goes….

I was always skinny growing up.  My entire family is inherently thin.  I never had to give my weight or what I ate any thought, but in 6th grade, I started skipping breakfast.  I just “didn’t have time” to eat in the mornings.  Harmless enough, you might be thinking, but skipping breakfast turned into skipping lunch…and skipping lunch turned into skipping dinner.  Before I knew it, I was a full-blown anorexic.

 By my freshmen year of high school, I was 5′ 8″ weighing in at a staggering 104lbs (and I thought I was fat!)  I was reduced to eating a  few pieces of fruit a day.  That was it.  I would allow myself to eat fruit and on days when I felt physically weak, I would indulge in a bowl of Ramon Noodles.  I was never the “exercise-until-you-drop” kind of anorexic.  I hated exercise.  I just starved myself because that took little effort on my part.  I took the hunger pangs I felt as a sign of strength.  I could fight through the urge to eat regardless of the pain.  I was actually proud of that.  As I write it now..it makes me ill to realize how sick I was back then.  But at the time, it was all I knew.  

It got to a point where my mom took me to the doctor and they both agreed, if I didn’t start eating immediately, they were going to hospitalize me.  Fortunately, my social life was much too important for me to miss, so I started eating.  And let me tell you, did that food taste good.  It was almost a relief for me to be “forced” into eating.  I was starving!  By the time I reached my senior year of high school, I would hardly say I had a well balanced diet…I lived off of Taco Bell…but I was eating regularly and had my weight up to a healthy 120lbs.  The unfortunate part was that while I did indeed started eating, I never dealt with the underlying self image issues.  I still had serious body image issues, but I can honestly say never chose to starve myself again in an effort to deal with those issues.  

Then life really threw me a curve ball.  I developed extremely severe asthma at the end of my senior year of high school, and I was put on a steroid, prednisone, to help me breathe.  This drug is supposed to be a temporary fix.  It has severe side effects when used long term.  Weight gain is one of the biggest side effects.  What was supposed to be a two-week dose, turned into EIGHT YEARS!! I saw doctor after doctor and every time one of them would wean me off the drug, I would have a severe asthma attack and end up back in the hospital…and back on the medicine.  

After several broken toes, (prednisone makes your bones very fragile) and a substantial amount of weight gain, we finally made a successful attempt to get me off the steroid…albeit, eight years later!  It seemed like some cruel joke.  Let’s give the anorexic chick a drug that will make her fat!  It felt like the powers-that-be were messing with my psyche!  But no matter how big I got, I still felt like I belonged to the rest of my family with the “great genes”.  I still felt like the “skinny” me was inside just crying to get out of the fat body it was trapped in….hence the title of this post…”The Skinny Cow”!  

Moving forward, it has been 15 years since I was put on that horrific medicine.  Although I cannot curse it entirely, it did keep me breathing for many years.  I still carry around most of the weight I gained from being on the drug, and I can only assume that 5 pregnancies have not done me any favors with my weight issues either.  My body image has simply become a daily obsession that is just part of who I am. I don’t think I even obsessed about my weight as an unhealthy anorexic, as I do today as an overweight mother of 5.  

Many women seem to get comfortable as they age with their body image and weight.  They have a sense of confidence about them regardless of what the scales read.  I am NOT one of those women.  I weigh myself daily, sometimes several times a day.  I have tried every diet and diet pill known to man.  Some of them were successful at the time, others were not.  My weight is a yo-yo like you have never seen before.  And right now…it’s up…WAY up…so I am obsessing more than usual.  I freak out on my family if they even think about taking my picture.  I don’t want anyone to document what I look like at this weight.  I get nervous going into public because I am so uncomfortable in my own skin.  I feel like everyone I bump into is thinking, “She would be really pretty if she lost 50 lbs!”  And listening to me talk, you would think I am obese.  While I am not insane enough to post my weight for all to see, I would say I am about 20lbs heavier now than in the picture I have posted on my “About Mother 2 Mother” page.  To me, that 20lbs is the heaviest monkey I have ever carried on my back!

I know…I know…how messed up can I possibly be??!!

Well, I am making progress.  I have come to realize that I have been struggling with my body image for as long as I can remember, and it has to come to an end.  I want to take all the energy I put into obsessing over my weight and stick it into something more worthy…which is part of why I started this blog.  I have decided that there is no easy way around this.  No diet fad or diet pill is going to get me to a healthy weight.  I need to do the work, if I want to see the results.  As cliché as it may sound, it truly is a lifestyle.  I have started filling my kitchen with healthy food options….LOTS of salads….and I have started walking with a friend.  I have to admit, the eating healthy part is much easier for me than the exercise component, but I know the two go hand in hand. 

Regardless of the number on the scale right now, I realize that this game is much more mental than physical.  As long as I can keep my thoughts right, my body is sure to follow.