Well, I am attempting to blog again, but this time around I shall be writing my attempts at weight loss. Don't get me wrong, I am very much so an anti-diet person and I love food a lot hence me attempting to do a food blog that I can never keep up with (it's because I eat too much).
For me, this decision has been a long time coming. I guess I should say a little about myself and my history. I have never been thin and skinny. Actually, I have been pretty overweight since I can remember. I think the first time I realized I was overweight was in the 7th grade and I was walking back to class and 2 of the boys in my class screamed, "ECLIPSE" as I walked passed. Not a good self esteem builder when you are already entering your awkward stages of life at 5'4" and 169 pounds. Kids are not nice but family can be even worse, especially an Asian family. I remember my grandparents always saying, "eat more! eat more!" because big babies are good, but when those big babies become overweight adults, it's not so aesthetically pleasing and then they ask, "why are you so fat?!"
By the end of freshman year high school, I hit a whopping 199 pounds and was at my maximum height of 5' 5.5" (which I round down to 5'5"). My weight stayed pretty stable, but in my freshman year of college I had kidney stones and those suckers not only hurt, but they made me lose weight (albeit, all water weight). I was at 189 and amazed that I could fit a size 12. Of course, the weight came back and probably out of depression and not caring again I hit my highest weight and my lowest point of my life. 220 pounds.
I always thought that I was just unfortunate to get all of my father's terrible genes and there was nothing to be done about it and I fell into this vicious circle just not caring about myself. "Yeah I am fat. If I can deal with it, so can you." That is what I told myself and that is how I coped with it.
I can't say I had the most fond memories growing up but I also cannot blame all of this weight gain and self loathing on mean words and comments made by other people. I had something to do with all that weight gain. All the mood eating and attempts at starvation did not help. It didn't help my weight. It' didn't help my self esteem. I was making myself more miserable.
I do believe, however, that my issues with my weight were, for a large part, due to my memories and experiences of being laughed at for being fat and had shaped me into a horribly timid, self loathing mess. I hated how I looked and I felt that people felt the same way. Why would anyone want to be with this?
After graduating college, I was 215 pounds and somehow, the weight started coming off, but probably not in the healthiest way. When I started working, I would miss out on meals a lot of the time and run around a lot with the kids, since I worked at a school. I would yo-yo from 198 to 205 pounds. Now, 4 years out of college, I had lost 15 pounds and kept it off and I was starting to feel a little better about myself.
Mid 2010, I felt was quite life changing for me. I was jogging with my friends (or at least getting some kind of movement in). I got asked out on dates, which I never thought would ever happen (granted it was from online sites and nothing became anything bigger than just being friends, but some people found me interesting). I moved. I got gym membership, or more like my older sister bought me membership. I was hesitant at first. Working out and sweating profusely around people was not my thing. I was disgusting enough, but I think it was a bit of a turning point, at least on my self image. By this time, it was November of 2010 I was 205 pounds (with shoes and after eating). I worked out on and off and I got my weight down to be a consistent 198 pounds. From my heaviest weight third year in college to that point, I lost 22 pounds, just casually adding more activity and cutting calories when I missed meals.
From September 2010 to June of 2011, nothing changed. Then one day, like magic, my entire thought process changed. What was this miracle? Well you have TLC's Freaky Eater's to thank for that. I watched the episode with the man that ate maple syrup with everything and it scared me enough to rethink what I, myself, was putting into my body. Granted, I was not an extreme case like that but I was pretty sedentary (I think I went to the gym for 30 minutes twice a week) and the fact that diabetes runs on both sides of my family hit me hard that day. It was the fear of death that spurred up my motivation to get into shape and out of this blobby mess I still was.
I started with cutting my caloric intake to 1500 calories a day from my probably over 2000 calorie daily intake. Cutting things out wasn't so hard. Then I started going to the gym at leaast 3times a day for about an hour every visit. I made sure to do cardio exercises and incorporate some weights. I started the end of June and by the end of August, I was at 187, like lightest I have been since high school.
I have recently started a food journal to try to make sure I am not over snacking and hopefully making better decisions of what I snack on. Though only 2 weeks in and still stagnant in the weight loss department, I am okay with that. The scale might not be my friend, and it tells me a number I might not be happy with, but I realize now that it is just a number. It tells me the weight of my organs, bones, muscles, clothes, shoes, and fat combined without deciphering the difference. My goal is to reduce the fat and to gain some much needed confidence I lost somewhere on the way to where I am now. It's been a constant struggle, but hopefully this blog will help me vent my frustrations along with share my successes with people who are possibly going through the same thing I am.
