Introduction: My history

Hi, I am Deb. I am single, 38 year old, morbidly obese woman. Yuck. Not a very nice way to have to describe yourself, but it is true. I am 5'11'' tall and weigh about 315 pounds. I need to lose about 150 pounds. Like many who are morbidly obese, I have struggled my entire life with weight and I am sure my story will sound familiar to many.

I was a chubby child, started high school at around 195 pounds, and ballooned to somewhere over 300 pounds by the time I graduated. I am not entirely sure of my weight then because I would not get on a scale.

After high school, I went away to college where I actually LOST weight. No, no "freshman 15" for me. I was not trying to lose weight, it just happened and soon my jeans were falling off me before I even realized what had happened. I was still overweight but no where close to the 300+ pounder I had become. I guess it was just the change in lifestyle. I went from living at home where I did absolutely no exercise and came home from school and ate a McDonald's meal, ice cream, and Little Debbie cakes as a SNACK before dinner to walking at least on hour a day back and forth between the dorm, classes, and work. I also only ate 3 meals a day with no snacks. I did not have a car and did not have access to get off campus and stock my dorm room with snacks so it was just my 3 meals at food service for me. Oh, I also started drinking diet sodas instead of regular. So I guess it was those things that caused me to lose. I would guess I was around 200 pounds for most of my college career.

So I graduated college and go my first "real" job which required me to travel nearly 100% of the time. I hated it but made friends with a couple of girls on the staff and that helped. In fact, they are still two of my best friends today. Anyway, our out of town projects would last 3-4 months at a time so we really sort of lived wherever it was we were working. My first project was in Richmond, VA, and one of the girls on the project was doing the NutriSystem diet and convince me to try it with her. I guess that was my first "real" diet. I distinctly remember my starting weight was 213. I was able to lose down to 175 before quitting. I was young and lost weight easily but I can still remember the first week that I posted a gain at my weigh in I was humiliated and too embarrassed to go back. Had I expected to lose every single week? I guess so, silly young girl that I was. Plus my weight had been such a source of humiliation for me in my life so far that any small set back that was witnessed by the person weighing me in was more than I could bear.

Over the course of the 3 year period that I travelled for work, I actually did a pretty good job of keeping the weight off on my own despite eating out for all my meals. I remember at lunch I would always eat just half of whatever it was I had ordered and that was it. For dinner I would keep fruit and yogurt in my room and skip going out to dinner most of the time. Probably not the healthiest thing, but at the time it was the best I thought I could do.

Finally, my 3 years at the travelling job were up and I happily accepted a position with one of the company's subsidiaries in Texas, where I currently live. I was thrilled at the prospect of not having to live in hotels anymore and to have the ability to pursue a social life outside of just the people I worked with. I joined a gym and started working out most days of the week, including weekends. Those were the days of step aerobics and I was hooked on them. I got really fit doing them. I joined Jenny Craig for the first time and got to my halfway point at which time they begin to transition you to 5 days of Jenny food and 2 days of your own food. At that time, they taught the food pyramid and food exchanges for the days you were on your own. Evenutally I quite Jenny Craig but successfully continued doing food exchanges and eventually got down to around 160 pounds. At 5'11" this is pretty thin. I was wearing size 10's and 12's and should have been happy. Looking back I was very pretty and looked good at this weight. But my head had never caught up to where my body was. I still saw myself as very fat.

Looking back, I can see this is where I started some disordered eating habits, bordering on anorexia and exercise bulimia. I also had a completely distorted body image. I literally thought I was fat and disgusting while those around me were starting to tell me I looked too thing and gaunt. I started to warp the healthy food exchange plan I was doing and started thinking things like, "If X grams of fat is good, then less is even better." It got to the point I would not even eat a chicken breast because there was some fat in it. At one point I was subsisting on fat free yogurt, plain dry bagels, fruit, carrot sticks, and plain boiled rice. I wouldn't even cook the rice in broth because that was fat to me. Over time I got thinner and my hair started falling out. My skin didn't look good either. I started having really weird symptoms that scared me to death, like a pins and needles sensation in my arms and muscle weakness in my legs so bad that I remember walking down the hall at work and having to stop and hold on to a wall until it passed. Or standing in the kitchen at home and having to hold onto the counter to be able to stand.

It was just before my eating and exercise habits started causing these problems that I met me soon-to-be husband (and later-to-be ex-husband). It was my first real experience with a relationship at the age of 27. Yes, I had had a boyfriend in college and then dated a couple of guys but he was my first real serious relationship. It was the first time I ever felt loved by a man. He was a really good guy in many ways. He never criticized me for my weight, which did go up and down during our time together, and he was just generally a kind person. During this time, I would say my weight hovered in the range of 165-185. Even at that high end, it wasn't terrible for someone of my height although I always wanted it to be lower.

We got married and bought a house and it was then I started to realize his immaturity and his irresponsibility with money. No wait, I knew about the financial irresponsiblity before we were married. Like so many young women before me, I thought he would "change" when we were married. He eventually took a job where he travelled during the week and was only home on weekends. I was horribly lonely then and started packing on weight very quickly, balloooning up to 253 pounds. I remember bingeing on half gallons of ice cream out of sheer loneliness and boredom. I didn't care about my appearance at all. Eventually, the financial strain that his habits caused led us to divorce. The relationship had turned into a parent-child relationship, which made neither of us happy. I did lose some weight after the divorce because I wanted to attract men but never really got back to a weight that made me happy.

So where am I now? It's been 8 years since I was divorced and I have been very emotionally closed off since then. I went up and down with my weight a few times, got out on the dating scene casually once or twice, but felt unsuccessful in that arena. Six years ago I changed jobs and moved to a different part of my city far away from my friends. During this past six years in my new part of town I did lose back down to 195 at one point to be a bridesmaid in friend's wedding. A combination of several things led me down the path back to 315: stressful working conditions, a sense of abandonment by friends, family, and co-workers, and just plain loneliness and disappointment. I am not blaming any of these things specifically. I do take the responsibility for my weight. It's just food is my coping mechanism and I finally realize that until I am able to change that I will never be able to lose this weight and keep it off.

For 8 years I have been using my food and my weight to avoid my life. Yes, there have been brief periods where I tried to make a change, lose weight, and participate in life. Then I would experience some hurt, rejection, or failure, and back down the path of destruction I would go gaining back everything and then some.

I am ready to get past this forever. I deserve to have a good life and I currently do not have one. I am making it my mission starting right now to gain control of my body and grab life by the horns. It's time for me to live!