Perhaps this story will be familiar to you....perhaps it is your story too......
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| I came into this world with a fat ass...but I'm determined not to leave it with one. |
I grew up in a household where chocolate cake and cherry pie were perfectly acceptable breakfast foods. While I was never a thin kid - I wasn't exactly fat either. My mom was an excellent cook - but the words "health food" weren't part of our regular vocabulary. However, meat, potatoes, cheese, bread....and lots and lots of sweets were regulars on the menu. These food items became the base of my diet and contributed significantly to my weight issues, although I didn't know this during my tender young years. My sugar addiction, which is still the bane of my existence, began as a young child and was fueled all through my teens, twenties and now thirties. To put it mildly, if sugar were as potent as heroin, I'd be dead thousands of times over by now. Hello, my name is Rochelle and I am a self-proclaimed sugar junkie.
My brother and sister were the fortunate skinny-minnies of the family while I was the kid with the solid legs and as my mother would say, "brick-shit house" physique - in other words, I had the genetic misfortune to resemble every rotund elder female found in my family tree. It didn't take me long to begin equating "solid" to mean fat, and despite the fact that I really wasn't so much fat, but simply just not "rail skinny", I started to develop a poor body image relatively early on in life. It didn't help that puberty came a knockin' at age 10 and things just started sprouting and bulging everywhere (well, except my height - that unfortunately never increased, despite everything else increasing). I wasn't exactly ready for my womanly curves but they were here, like it or not. Those "solid" legs were now sources of deep hate. I let it dictate how I felt about myself and fuel the bad behaviors for years to come that I am still paying for to this present day...
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| If I could talk to this girl today, I would tell her that she is not fat, and that "solid" is just another word for "strong". |
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| My double chins don't lie - college living took it's toll on my body |
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| That Tiki Bar Hurricane wasn't doing me any favors - but somehow I let myself not care. |
When I met my awesome now-husband in 2008, I had finally started to turn my body around. I was working in NYC in the fashion industry and although I was commuting every day back and forth by bus from Bethlehem, PA, I knew I needed to do something before my health was severely compromised. I was in a bad frame of mind and body and felt like nothing was ever going to work. My roommate at the time, who is one of my best friends and a nurse, offered to get me a 6 month membership to Crunch Fitness (Dec 2007) which was around the corner from my job. I faithfully went after work each night and finally saw the scale become less of an enemy. I hit my lowest adult weight (around 189 or so) in March 2008 and looked liked this:
and this....
I felt the best I had felt in years - sexy, confident, pretty and best of all - in shape (best of all - that shape was not ROUND). While I had far to go in terms of losing more weight, I knew I was on the right path to getting where I needed to be.
When I met Josh, my priorities swiftly shifted. I wanted to see him during the week - this was not possible if I went to the gym. Slowly but surely, my schedule changed to accommodate my new love, and as is par for the course during new relationships, weight started creeping back on.
Josh loved me no matter how much weight I put on - which was a good thing because I gained 40 lbs in the course of the first 14 months of our relationship. It didn't deter him from asking me to marry him, but the realization that it was now finally MY turn to be a bride set me into a mass panic. Don't get me wrong - I was elated and over the moon in love! My panic stemmed not from being worried about getting married - I knew I had found 'the one" and couldn't wait to spend my life with him. But I didn't want to be a fat bride. That was NOT on my to-do list.
I started blogging in May 2009 in hopes that my upcoming nuptials would be catalyst enough to get my ass in gear to start losing weight. My blog, Nice Day for a Weight Wedding, is the blow by blow account of my life prior to my wedding October 9, 2010 (and a little beyond that too). My goal was to lose 90 lbs for my wedding. I lost about 36 pounds before the wedding stress and parties started to kick in and by the time the wedding rolled around, I was already starting to gain again...
Here I am getting my nails done before the wedding. Sitting is the absolute worst - everything just squishes together...
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| I was happy here - but that's only because I had no idea I looked like Jabba the Hut when I sat down. |
And this is one of those wedding pictures that makes me absolutely cringe...
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| How can one person's cleavage be like 3 feet long??? E-gads! |
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| Santa seems to have brought me a few new chins for Christmas. |
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| Oh Lord - please don't let there be another chin in this box! |
With winter a distant memory and the summer of 2011 fast approaching, I began to panic once more....what was I doing to myself? How did I let my weight get so out of control yet again???? What kind of future was I going to have if I let this bad behavior continue? I was already starting to feel the results of years of being overweight. I had the beginning of arthritis developing in my knees. I had a hard time breathing walking up stairs or hills. Worst of all, I felt so much older than my chronological age. It was tremendously embarrassing.
The problem was, I was very disillusioned with so many of the programs I had tried in the past, so I decided I would do some research as to how others who lost 100 lbs or close to 100 lbs did it. The more I read, the more convinced I became that the program had to work with my lifestyle and that slow and steady was the proper approach. I was done with yo-yo-ing. I wanted the weight off - but I also wanted it to STAY off.
So, back to the blogosphere I went - and starting July of 2011 I embarked on the last weight loss journey I will ever take. 100 lbs to lose and 100 weeks to lose it. I'm glad to have you join me as I defeat the toughest demon I have ever had to to battle. Buckle up my friends - it's bound to be a bumpy ride.
