Losing - One

My husband married me when I was fat. And I guess by Hollywood's standards I still am.

When I met him I hadn't yet turned 18 and we married 3 1/2 years later. I was overweight and I had been that way for as long as I could remember. Even as a little girl I remember being bigger than everyone else, perhaps because I was tall, but also because I was always chubbier than most of my friends.

When I was in high school, I wasn't athletic and I tended toward the overweight side of the coin, so I continued to gain weight. I was moderately accepted among my peers on the merits of my good grades, so while it bothered me and I wished I was skinny, I didn't really do anything about it. This was also before the childhood obesity epidemic and I was only one of a handful of overweight kids that I knew.

I thought my body was designed to be this way. I thought that it was impossible for me to be thin.

Throughout college nothing changed, in fact it got worse as I dated my soon-to-be husband. We sat in the booths of Boston Market weekly and the drive thrus of Taco Bell on a regular basis. I worked at a coffee house where I often partook of the first donuts of the morning and full-milk-fat mochas.

We got married and I worked full time. The first few years of marriage yielded more weight gain and by the time I was 25, I was a full 60 pounds too heavy. I wasn't healthy, and even though I was young, I could see potential health problems in the future.


We wanted to begin a family, and naive to the ways that pregnancy affects women who are overweight, I just knew that I didn't want to become pregnant adding more pounds to my body. I was fed up with dressing rooms, bathing suits, ill-fitting bras the sense of being out of control.


In the most gentle way a husband knows how, Chad asked me if I wanted to start going to Weight Watchers.


At first I balked, but not for the reason one might think. I wasn't angry at him for suggesting I was fat. I just didn't think my body was meant to be thin.


If I would have really thought at any length, I would have discovered how silly that actually was. I didn't know how to eat right, or how many calories I should be intaking, or what exercises would make me the strongest. I was uneducated in all of these things. I was overwieght simply because I had never tried to be any different. I was lazy.


So, the next Monday night I went to a WW meeting. I didn't know that I would be spending every Monday night there for almost a year. I weighed in and cringed at the number. The counselor said to me something I would never forget: "You will never see that number again."


I followed the plan and by the next Monday, only by changing my eating habits, I lost close to 5 pounds. I had hope....

(Part two in my journey tomorrow)