Weight Control

I think my weight is the lowest it has been in years. Girlfriend says it's almost definitely gotten a little lower since she's known me, but I didn't have a scale then, so it doesn't count. Woke up today, and I'm down to 321 lbs.

I'm not trying to lose weight. I think that's where most people go wrong. I'm very fat positive (when I'm not depressed, and then I start shaming myself). I don't believe there's anything wrong with being fat or that we should all aspire to thinness. I believe we should aspire to live a healthy lifestyle, and if you can do that while being 500 lbs, then no one has the right to tell you to lose weight.

For me, being this size has a detrimental affect on my health and self-esteem. Food is an addiction, one that I've tried a couple times before to control. For most of my adult life, I've hovered around the 330 to 345 range, and I think I might be pre-diabetic. Switching to more healthy eating habits is causing me to lose weight, but my goal is only to feel better about myself and not tip over into serious health problems.

I think I can trace this problem back to when I was a kid. I don't know where I got the idea, but I recall being in third or fifth grade and lying about my weight because otherwise, my peers might think I was fat. I very vividly recall telling someone that I was 98 lbs and having them all make fun of me for lying about it, but thinking that was better than them knowing the truth. If I recall correctly, I was around 120 at the time.

I've always had a sweet tooth, and I was never taught to manage it. I used to be on the local swim team, and I looked forward to matches, not because I enjoyed swimming or competition, but because my grandparents would give me a giant cooler full of soda and candy to eat at my discretion. They reasoned that the sugar would give me a burst of energy for winning, but it probably just weighed me down.

In high school, my grandmother decided that the solution to this problem was diet pills, which she made me take on and off. She'd get the latest fad pills, and I would take them for a few days until they were forgotten. And then a new fad would start up, and she would make me take those for a while. Apparently, she did the same thing to my mother, only the diet pill fad of choice back then was Black Beauties, which did not help her already struggling school career.

At 19, I finally moved to Washington to live with my mother, and that's where things really got out of control. I went there for school, but wound up working 18-hour days as a housekeeper, constantly on the road and eating fast food and candy bars to get through the day. Every second that I wasn't working or eating, I was passed out in the passenger seat of the car because I couldn't stay awake. I realize, in retrospect, that was when I started stress eating. I needed those candy bars between McDonald's and Taco Bell meals. I drank nothing but Coke (the literal brand of soda) except for the rare moment's when I got a Dr Pepper or a Mountain Dew with my meal. I think I had water once over the entire two-year period.

To this day, 10 years later, I can't have more than a single can of soda at one time. It turns completely tasteless after the first few sips. I mean, I shouldn't be doing that anyway, but sometimes I still do.

When my grandmother's health took a turn for the worst, and my mother and I moved back to Missouri together, things got a little better for a little while. We both got jobs at Wal-Mart, and suddenly we had time to cook real food. Except that we both spent so long on a fast food diet that neither of us felt like it anymore. Real food became a weekend treat, and while we gradually got better about that, defaulting to pizza delivery or something never really went away.

At the same, we started off and on dieting. About once or twice a year, mom would see a new fad diet. She didn't believe in pills after her experience growing up, but she kept getting taken in by the latest programs. I would go along mostly to support her because I didn't believe either of us could ever lose weight. So we'd join a program for a few weeks, do really good the first few days, then slowly get worse until we gave up entirely. Rinse and repeat for like five or six years until I moved in with Girlfriend.

Girlfriend was bigger than I was back in high school, and she had successfully lost that weight and kept it off through a combination of martial arts and educating herself about nutrition. She taught me that what I considered a healthy diet (meat fried in butter, potatoes with butter, cheese, and sour cream, fried chicken-- staples of a Southern diet.) was actually pretty high in fat and calories.

I know, right? Butter is high in fat? Who would have ever thought?

So now my diet is pretty healthy, except for one thing. I still have a food addiction, and when we hit rough times, I lose control and eat an entire bag of chips every day. Healthy meals don't do much good when you're snacking on high fat and sugar snacks constantly.

Like I said, I've tried twice before to control this. I do good for a while, and then every crashes at once. This time, though, I've got a secret weapon. Somewhere along the way, I have developed a taste for sugar free candy and soda. I know, I know, sugar free doesn't actually help you lose weight. But the thing is, it does help me.

See, I still have those days where I drink nothing but soda and eat candy all day. Having sugar free around means I can get through those days without beating myself up over it. Although, re-reading that article, I had forgotten about the increased risk of diabetes. I may have to rethink this plan.

 But I can do that now because I have the most important thing that someone in my position can have-- support. I am not alone. I do not have people telling me to just eat less and have some self control. Now, I'm the only person telling me that I'm bad and lazy for being fat, and Girlfriend has a much louder voice and is happy to help me drown those thoughts out.