I sometimes wish I could blame it on that. “Hey – I was a chubby kid – so it’s not shocking I’m a chubby adult”.  But I wasn’t. I was a skinny, built kinda like a boy girl. It all went haywire when puberty set it. But even when I look back at high school pictures – I was far from fat. Far from chubby. I still have flashbacks from that time period about thinking that I was fat. WTF?

Senior year – Swim team:

I mean – if not for the shadowing around me – you could see I was a fit, healthy girl. Crazy – after I graduated at age 17, I grew 2” in height (freaky!) up to what I am now – 5’10”.  My weight hovered around the higher end for my height, but I was always trying to lose “Just 10 lbs”. My self image was messed up. Now, I didn’t see myself as overwhelmingly fat – but I did see myself as pudgy. When I graduated college, I was fit. I actually liked what I saw in the mirror – even though I still longed for that “ just 10 more lbs down”. I know now a lot of this is wrapped up in shitty self-esteem.

As the years went by – I would go up and down… Up and down… Gain weight… Lose weight… safely in my “healthy” weight zone… just above my healthy weight zone… By 2003 when I lost my job (that I had been at for 10 years) I was about 10 pounds above my safe weight zone – and I haven’t been back to the safe weight zone since. I’ve gotten close. With the “South Beach Diet” I got close – then I got tired of the limitations and gained all the weight back and then some. Last year (2010) I embarked on another round of Weight Watchers – which I have done various times before and always had success. This time around, I lost easily 30lbs+ before I started getting distracted… the weight slowly but surely started creeping back on…

This past February my apt fridge took a shat… I took it as an opportunity to get back on the Weight Watchers wagon (I’m doing it online – no meetings, yet…), it was especially tempting to do so since I now know soooo many people in real life, who are on the program. And I have big goals. I have to commit to this big time this year. I want to lose a minimum of 60lbs. 45 ish would get me in my healthy zone again. I don’t have delusions on this happening quickly. I am getting older – it will get harder, the time is now. So – I plan to blog about the process.

I’ve been on WW now for almost five weeks and have lost about 13 lbs – although if I go by my official weigh-ins, I’ve lost about 9. I’m sneaking in those mid-week weigh ins to see my progress… A habit I should break – but honestly at this stage it re-affirms for me how water retention, bloating, etc can affect me.

The upside – I don’t look in the mirror and see myself as “too fat”. I do see a chubby version of me looking back – but I have no fears I’ll always feel fat. I am so happy I don’t see myself bigger than I am like many people on the opposite side of the weight-loss spectrum are. Maybe I’m purely seeing me now. Maybe my self-esteem is where it needs to be…

-Amy

…I neglected this blog so much I let the old hosting/old site die, so to speak, and waited a bit to resurrect it. Need to work the kinks out, bear with me

-Amy