Just being reflective

I've been sharing all my posts via Facebook but this is not one that will be shared. I need to write about this but I don't need to widely share it with my Facebook friends. If you read this, great. If not, that is OK too. Either way, comments are not needed and if you see me in person, you don't need to bring it up.

At our workout the other day, someone posed a question to anyone who would listen and respond. "When did you realize that you had a weight problem?" And the follow up was, "What caused your weight to get out of control?" No one answered, everyone just thought.

The second question is much easier to answer because I can pinpoint the time in my life when I let things get out of control. In college, specifically around my 21st birthday, I was at my all time adult skinniest which was about 140 pounds. The following year, at my college graduation, I weighed about 150 pounds but felt really good. By the time I hit 23 and almost exactly one year after my graduation, I had just gotten engaged and I weighed in at 195 pounds. 45 pounds in a year. In a year. I was never hit by the freshman 15 but I was hit by the desk job 45. In the year and a half prior to our wedding, I lost 25 pounds mainly because at that point I had lost my job and became a bit more active. I've gained a little bit of weight since the wedding but now that gives you an idea of where I started just a couple of weeks ago.

My desk job started two weeks after college and if I knew then what I know now, I would never have started that job. My hours were 6AM-4PM with 24/7 access to work via blackberry and multiple Saturday shifts a month. There was so much stress and so much food. Breakfast and lunch at my desk and once I got home at night, I had no energy to do much else other than veg out and eat. I was used to skinny Melanie but I was also used to walking around campus and being active. I looked in the mirror and saw her, skinny Melanie. I stood on the scale and swore to myself, if you see 170, you will start eating better. If you see 180, you need to start eating better. If you see 190, things have to get better. I saw 195 and did nothing about it.

What happened between 150 and 170? I had a miscarriage. I was on birth control and the pregnancy took us by complete and utter surprise. I was still surprised by it when I miscarried. The doctor guesstimated that I was a couple months along. (The doctor also said some really mean things to me during the appointment in regards to promiscuity and being more careful, not even caring enough to realize I had a live in boyfriend who I had been with for four years). I was pretty depressed and hardly sleeping for weeks. I don't remember too much about it just because I tried really hard to block things out. I remember working myself to unimaginable stress levels and getting to the point where I was dreaming about work. I never got away from that place. Then I officially met fat Melanie. I saw an informal engagement picture of myself in the same shirt I wore on my 21st birthday. It was not pretty and I realized that the person in the mirror and in my head was not what the world saw.

When I got laid off, it was a blessing in disguise. After the initial "I feel really bad for myself stage", I really turned around my lifestyle. I worked a field researcher internship for a few months, got a dog (yay for Hank!), spent some more time off work, and then got my current job. In that time I lost about 15 of the excess pounds I spent a year accruing. And for the first time, I had my doctor tell me I was obese. She also told me that weight loss is black and white. You eat too much, you gain weight. To this day, I don't agree with her. Weight loss and weight gain is not black and white. If it were that easy, weight would be much easier to lose. The nutritionist I met at that time agreed with me. She also told me that I didn't look obese. Those words actually didn't help me at all. At the time, if someone had told me I was fat, I would have worked harder. Everyone I knew told me, "you don't look that fat."

"You don't look that fat." "You don't look like you weigh that much." "You don't look like you wear a size 12." "I think you are beautiful and I love you no matter what." These are not helpful phrases. Ok, I don't look my size so I'm not going to work as hard because I don't LOOK fat. Honesty would hurt but it would also kick my ass into shape. I'm not talking about honesty after the fact. "Oh wow, you finally lost that extra weight." "Oh you look so much better now that you've lost weight." I'm thinking more along the lines of, "Well you don't look like you weigh 180 pounds but you do look like you've gained weight. Need help getting into shape?"  

So now, here I am. Hi. My name is Melanie. I'm overweight. I realized I had a problem two and a half years ago. I've lost 25 pounds on my own and now I need help because I've been on a plateau for a long time. I let my weight get out of control after I graduated from college, got a high stress desk job, had a miscarriage, and ate away the stress. I started the 5 Ton Challenge at Terrio and so far I've lost 8 pounds. I'm peeing like a crazy woman, I can walk 3 miles in 45 minutes, and I've stopped complaining about only eating 17 grapes at a time. I'm here to rock it and get better. It's nice to meet you.