A little background:
In my early childhood I was extremely skinny. As I went through puberty I was average weight for my height. It wasn't until I reached high school that I started to put on weight. I discovered that eating made me feel better about the stress of school and home life. I love food! I went from 5'7" and 150 pounds to 185 pounds by my junior year. By the time I graduated, I had bulked up to 200 pounds.
As I entered college, I lost weight. I was away from negative influences at home and I had drive and ambition and a positive attitude. Also, there wasn't a lot of junk food in my dorm room because I couldn't afford it. I dropped down to 170 pounds and began playing tennis and taking nightly walks with my roommate. I felt great.
After college, I moved home again. My weight immediately began to climb. My parents divorced after twenty five years of marriage amid lots of emotional and mental anguish for all of us. I ate and ate and ate. Before long, I was up to 240 pounds and I was miserable. Then, I got a very physically demanding job. I was twenty one and I started working for a large company in the shipping department unloading trucks. Within six months I was down to 170 pounds.
I met my future ex husband at work. After deciding to move in together a year later, my weight began to climb. You see, I thought he was my knight in shining armor. He was going to rescue me from the emotional and mental abuse I dealt with in my family. Little did I understand, at that time, that I was doing nothing more than exchanging tormentors.
My husband's first assault on my fragile ego was when he began talking about a girl he worked with at his new job. He bragged about how she was flirting with him and how good she looked. He continually assured me he wouldn't do anything with her because he was with me, but that didn't stop the comments. If I said anything about it bothering me, I was called "jealous", "psychotic", and "crazy". I ate my insecurities and pain.
The more I ate, the more pain I had. When we got married I had a good paying job with a large company in their engineering department. I was 23 and my weight had already climbed to 210 pounds. My husband began making comments about my weight. One time in particular, I had just gotten out of the shower and he said, "You need to go on a diet." Another time he said, "You used to be beautiful before you got fat." Those are only two of the comments I remember. We won’t discuss the looks, sounds of disgust and jokes. We didn't have sex on our honeymoon. He was very subtle when he stated "If you get to the point that my seatbelts don't fit you any more I'm divorcing you". He had a sports car at the time and while the seat belts fit me fine, he said they hadn't fit his sister when she rode with him and he was disgusted by that. I ate.
Our sex life completely dried up. I can count on one hand the number of times we had sex the first three years of our marriage. He kept saying it was him, not me. I suspected infidelity, homosexuality and every other thought a woman in her early twenties with a husband in his mid twenties would suspect if they weren't having sex. Especially considering that sometimes we had sex three times a day while we were living together. I was constantly finding pornographic magazines and internet porn sites on his browsing history. I was too insecure and scared of losing him to say much, but it bothered me a lot. I knew something was wrong, I just wasn't sure what. I bought lingerie and cooked romantic dinners. I took him on weekend getaways. Nothing worked. So, I ate. You see, having children was extremely important to me. In fact, before I married my ex I told him that I would not marry him if he didn't want children. It was the only condition I had.
By our fifth year of marriage, I was now 28 and he was 32. We didn't have sex the last three years of our marriage at all. We were married in March 1995 and divorced in November 2002. From 1999 until the day of our divorce, he had not touched me. I hated him by then and probably would have attempted to break his hand if he had tried. I knew he was cheating on me. He had admitted to going to parties and enjoying the company of a seventeen year old girl, "but nothing happened". I also found out he was taking a woman he worked with on "dates" that he called "friends hanging out together". Again, I was called crazy, psychotic and jealous when I had a problem with that. I was done. I also weighed 270 pounds.
After telling my ex husband to leave the house in October 2001, I lost fifty pounds in less than three months. I had the support of friends and family. I was meeting people and began dating four months after our separation. I had made up my mind that I was too young to be miserable any longer and that I was going to have a life free of emotional and mental abuse. I didn't care when I found out he was telling everyone I cheated on him. I didn't care when I found out he had a letter written by someone I had never heard of and was telling people it was from my boyfriend. I didn't care when he told my mother I had made a pass at his co-worker at a party. I didn't care when I found out that he told everyone that he worked with that he didn't know where I was a lot of times when he knew I was visiting family or on business trips. What got me is when I found out he married the woman he had been cheating on me with and she had three kids. I discovered black, swirling, sucking, stinking pools of hatred deep within my gut that I never knew existed.
I began dating someone that I thought was the answer to all my prayers. He was handsome, successful, and independent. He treated me like I had always wanted to be treated. Nights that I got out of work late, he would call me and talk to me on the way home until he was sure I was in the house and safe. I felt loved. I felt cherished. I felt beautiful. I lost another twenty pounds. I was now 180 pounds. In June of that same year, 2002, I found out I was pregnant. I also found out that my Prince Charming wasn't so charming after all. He disappeared. He moved, changed his phone number, changed his email address and told the people at his work not to put my calls through. Now, it may surprise you to hear that I really wasn't that upset with him. I was too happy about being pregnant. I could do this on my own. I owned a house, a car, had a good job. I didn't need him or anyone to help me. This was completely doable.
I lived forty five minutes from my mother at the time and I'm diabetic. She insisted that I sell my home and come live with her. I resisted. She insisted. I resisted more. She insisted more. Finally, after realizing that my morning sickness, weekly doctor's appointments, endocrinologist appointments and twice weekly non-stress tests were taking a toll on my job and my pocket book, I agreed. If I didn't have the house payment to worry about I would be fine. That was the beginning of the end.
My younger sister, who lives next door to my mother, was not supportive. Actually, saying that my sister wasn't supportive is like saying Hitler didn't like Jewish people. I was called everything but human. I was criticized. I was ridiculed. It was nine months of unceasing hatred, finger pointing and harassment. My morning sickness increased, I began losing weight. The doctors worried about the baby. My sister accused me of being a drama queen. My mother refused to take sides or "get in the middle". I regretted my decision to sell my home, but now I couldn't afford to move out because of all the missed time from work. I was on FMLA and my hours were quickly dwindling. People at work would look at me and say, "I can't believe you're still coming to work." I looked like death warmed over.
When my son was born I quickly regained my weight and extra. I was up to 240 pounds in no time. My weight has steadily climbed since that time. I am now 5'7" on the dot and 285 pounds. I am happily remarried and living away from my mother and sisters. I will be forty years old in September and it has taken me this long to admit that those family relationships are toxic for me. I have made a decision to lose the weight and to get past the constant negativity and indifference of my family. I will do it and I will be healthy in my forties both physically and mentally. My son needs me and he needs me to spend time with him and to be more active. I want that too. He is the most important thing in my life and since heart disease, diabetes and strokes are in our family history, if I don't do something I won't be here in twenty years. I truly believe that.
And so, it begins...
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