So in my first entry I left off with finishing high school, weighing around 220. I don't have many pictures from my freshman and sophomore years of college, nor do I have any idea how much I gained each year. I do know, however, that I didn't play any sports, knocked my PE credits out in the fall semester of my frosh year, and that the buffet style of my college's cafeteria was bad news bears. Some days I ate as much, if not more, than the proverbial huge football linemen.

Ugh.

By my junior year I had put on weight, and was a solid size 24. This was my last year living on campus. I was an RA in an all freshman dorm, and I remember keeping lots of food in my room and bringing food to go from the cafeteria to eat in private because I was so embarrassed to eat in public. I would pack in loads and loads, so full I could barely shut the container. It was opaque, and I'd close it as soon as food was in when going around to the next so no one could see my gluttony. Such shame plagued my eating daily.

I am unsure how I know this, but I do know that I was around 290 by the end of my junior year, because that summer I spent 2 months in China. The city was one of about 5 million, so there was a lot of walking between bus stops and places, not to mention all of the hikes and walking while doing touristy stuffs. Plus, for about 3-4 weeks I had a mad case of stomach death and, quite literally, about an hour after eating anything it came out in liquid form through the wrong orifice.

The bad news is that I remember loving the authentic Chinese food and eating more than most, save for a few large males, at the table. In addition, I felt deprived somehow and on a few occasions I went to both McDonald's and KFC (there was one of each about 3 minutes from my hotel) and buying enough food for three people, then taking it to my room and scarfing it down as fast as I could. My heart would race, scared that I would be caught by my roommate, but I valued the milkshake, chicken, fries, and various burgers more than my own dignity (not to mention my body).



All of that shame aside, I did lose 30 pounds, and by my return to the US in August of '03 I was down to about 260. The picture above was in October of '03 and I was only about 5 pounds heavier. I was able to fit into a size 22, and in some things a 20, and it was the most incredible experience! I loved buying that smaller size, even if it was only one size down, and even if it was still a 22. At 265 I almost felt small, which certainly sounds ridiculous to any "normal" woman of the 6-12 size range that most people I know fall into.



The weight crept back on, and I quit weighing myself soon enough. I had a few different life changes- I lived in 4 different places in less than a year, each time with new roommates, one of which in the basement with a couple I barely knew, thus where I ate most of my food "out" because their hospitality made me feel bad, thus I didn't eat their food even though they encouraged me to. When I did eat at "home" it was what I call cardboard pizzas- the kind from the store you make in your own oven, and I would subsequently eat the whole thing. Then I lived with a health nut who drove me crazy (I remember her literally saying, "You know what your problem is? You eat too many carbs", though I never asked her what my problem was. I have to note here that I love her dearly and she's a sweet friend- just not someone I lived well with!) which tended to lead me to eat even more unhealthily, just in secret, as if that small rebellion "got" her somehow. All it did was put countless pounds on my already fat ass!

As I was student teaching in the fall of '04 I remember having to buy pants in size 26 and even a few dressy pants in size 28 because they just fit better. The 26 was the right size, but I hated the feeling of fitted clothes, so I upsized. During this time, as well, I started to have financial issues because student teaching made it logistically impossible to work (being that I spent so much time involved in ministry that it was basically already a 30 hour a week job). Then, when I finished, I expected to miraculously get a solid job right out of college.

Instead, I worked at a call center for $8 an hour and subbed at a local high school an average of about 5 times a month. This didn't pay the credit card bills I had irresponsibly racked up, and I just kept eating more and more to cope with it. Sadly, as expensive as it ended up being, when I had no money eating cheap and terribly unhealthy yet disgustingly appealing food made me feel like I was still ok.

In June of '05 I left my beloved home state of Washington to go spend a summer in Texas and then two years in North Carolina as a teacher with a program that places highly qualified (read: overachieving) college grads in low income schools. I nearly cried in May of that year when the lady doing my physical required for the program told me I weighed 330 pounds- it was the first time that I knew I weighed over 300 pounds. I just kept gaining weight throughout the first year, probably getting up to 350 or 360- I didn't have a scale that went high enough to tell me how fat I was.







I am uncertain how much I weighed at our wedding, but I estimate it to be around 330. I look pretty enough, but I can't get over how big I'll always look on my wedding day. The joy is that Jason is amazing, and still loves me for who I am, while encouraging me to really pursue God's best for my body and not allow food addiction to rule my life.

So you have the background... sadly, there aren't really any pictures of me since the wedding, and that was 5 months ago. I simply don't like seeing the way I look in pictures. But minus pictures I can tell you this-- when I went to an appointment in mid-December I was shocked to find that I was 367 pounds. I gained over 40 pounds in hardly over three months! Attribute it to eating out, ordering in, eating more than I could ever need, binging because it felt good emotionally... the food just stacked up in pounds on my body.

The biggest reason for this blog is this: I am addicted to food. It's not merely about being fat and wanting to be skinny. I don't honestly want to be skinny. I would be happy if I were eating right and exercising regularly and my body decided that a size 12 was where it naturally wanted to be. Would I love to wake up tomorrow with the metabolism of a 12 year old boy, with a body gobbling up 3,000 calories a day and no matter what I do I can't stop losing weight? Sure. But that's not realistic. EVERY woman in my family is heavy. Every. Single. One. We all have hips, thighs, most of us have big chests, and we simply aren't skinny people. Genetically I am simply not programmed to ever be a size 4 and that's ok! But I can't live with food ruling my life.

That's physical background... my next entry will focus on why I am the way I am, delving more deeply into the above paragraph. You don't go to bed a size 10 and wake up a size 28-- there are reasons and I'll bare my soul pertaining to mine. But for today, I should just get this post up :)