A (not so) brief history of my adventures in weight loss

This is a photo of me when I was 17 years old. I remember the day vividly. I was hanging out with my friend Kevin on Thayer Street in Providence and a photographer from the NewPaper asked if he could take our pictures for a story on street fashions. It was 1982 and apparently the vintage/thrift store clothes with the chopped hair was enough of a curiosity that we got a spot on the page.

Here's the weird thing. I thought I was fat. I remember thinking I was fat. Now, when I look at that photo, it floors me to recognize that I actually had a great body.

I thought I was fat as a kid, too. I remember in third grade asking my friend Jill if I was as a fat as Wendy. Wendy, poor kid, was really obese. In my head I had no way to tell just how fat I was. It makes me sad to look at pictures from that time because truly, I was a normal kid.

By 8th grade, I really WAS fat. I weighed about 165 lbs. So I went on the Scarsdale diet, which promised a 1 lb. a day weight loss. Just think... I could lose 20 lbs. in 20 days!!! Not even a whole month! Except of course it didn't work that way. You basically starved yourself for 2 weeks and then gained it all back the following two weeks. It was a nightmare diet of chicken broth and celery sticks. What was I thinking? Diets sucked in the late 70's, I guess.

I did, for one day, manage to get to 135 lbs. I stepped on the scale in my 10th grade gym class and felt enormous relief that I wasn't the fattest girl in the school. But I left the weird, restrictive diet behind and steadily, from that point on, gained it all back. And then some, of course.

By the time I got married, at age 24, I was wearing at least a size 22 and probably tipped the scales at 235 lbs. Then, when I quit smoking a year later and had some minor skirmishes with major depression, I gained even more weight.

The turning point for me was one day when I was walking along a path on Cape Cod and could barely move. I was dying, lugging my big body over the sand in the Pamet. Suddenly, I had a revelation.... I got a sense that this was not the body I was supposed to have. This was not how God wanted me to live. I was at my all time high weight of 264 lbs.

A couple days after my husband and I got back to Providence, I joined Weight Watchers and over the next 2 years, lost about 85 lbs. I looked and felt pretty good!

And then I got pregnant with my first son. I tried to continue at WW, but it was just too hard to feel sick and tired and have to get on the scale every week having gained weight. I stopped going.

After Noah was born, I struggled, again, with my weight. Up and up it went. I ballooned back to my all time high weight within about a year. I felt like crap. I tried WW again, because it had worked so well the first time, but my heart just wasn't in it. I realized that there were bigger problems than a 'diet' could address. I needed some God in my life, desperately.

So, instead, I joined Overeaters Anonymous. It is a 12 step program, modeled on AA, for people who are compulsive overeaters. That certainly seemed to describe me. I came to believe that I was an addict and that I needed to take drastic measures to get healthy. I got a sponsor. Cut out all wheat and sugar, ate three meals a day with absolutely NOTHING in between and began to take off the weight. It was a grueling diet. I had to weigh and measure everything I put in my mouth and spend most of my time obsessing about the next meal. Since I was only allowed to eat three times a day, the panic that I wouldn't get enough to eat at any single meal was always lurking in the background. Plus, whenever I went to a friend's for dinner, there was always a big production because I couldn't eat bread, pasta or any kind of wheat products. I would carry my own rice pasta.... would bring my own meals to dinner parties. Oy Vey.

Looking back on it, I realize that I did immeasurable damage to my head by following that food plan. It was based on another vintage 1970's plan called the gray sheet (because it was xeroxed on gray paper, LOL) and really, had nothing to do with health.

But somehow, even through my second pregnancy, I managed to stick with OA. I never really lost much weight, but I did avoid eating compulsively. However, I have to say it was clear that I was compulsive about my food, even when I was abstaining from sugar and wheat.

After about 5 years on the rigid plan, with no appreciable improvement in my health and well-being, I walked away from OA.

And went back to my bad eating habits and wound up gaining back almost all the weight I had lost. Again.

So, here I am. I am embarking on a journey, not just of getting to a healthy weight, but of getting to a healthy place in my relationship with food. I am learning to think of food as fuel... the beautiful fuel that keeps my wonderful body going.

I love the NEW Weight Watchers program because it is about learning to eat moderately. No extremes here. Nothing is off limits. No weird rules. No having to bring my own bloody dinner to a friends. Just easy does it, one day at a time, eating healthy because it is going to make me feel great.

I have a lot of damage to undo. A lifetime of pain and suffering to sift through. But I believe God has brought me this far for a reason and I am ready to lay this whole issue at his feet and invite him to give me the strength and courage to do this. One day at a time.

And oh, what joy, to realize that I am not destined for ill health for the rest of my life. I am not destined for sluggishness and lack of energy. Even now, after only a couple of weeks, I can feel a HUGE difference in the way my body feels. I have tons more energy... am sleeping less, but more soundly, and feel, in a word, great.

Praise God. You have prepared me for this. You have given me the heart to want to serve you, and I believe, Lord, that taking care of myself does, in fact, serve you.