BFrench
I have been overweight since I was seven years old. Some years in school I was heavier; some years not as heavy, but definitely overweight since 7 years of age. The years I had friends at school I wasn't as heavy. The years where I was considered the teacher's pet and the others kids pretty much hated me for it, I was quite fat. You can see it in my school pictures. Yep, you guessed it, I am an emotional eater. I would get home from school and start snacking until supper time and then I would eat a full meal as well, well actually probably two. I know I always ate as much meat as Dad and as I now know that was probably 2 servings for him, but more like 4 servings for me, (difference in palm sizes and all that.)
I was always aware that I weighed more than other kids my age, but I never really worried about it. Once in 8th grade I attempted to lose weight by skipping lunch until a friend of mine asked if my mom knew what I was doing. I did NOT want Mom to know and I was afraid she would tell her mom who would then tell mine, so that "dieting" attempt only lasted about 3 days. My friend also wanted to lose weight so we would go into the nurse's office and weigh ourselves everyday after lunch. I weighed 150 pounds and 5'1.5". And that was a good year. I had several friends, or at least girls who were friendly towards me. Then came high school. My "friends" decided I was no longer their friend. They told me so in a note passed during history class. That year I grew half an inch and gained 17 pounds. By the time I graduated high school in 1989 I weighed 170 pounds and was officially obese. Then I didn't step on a scale again until 1997 when I was pregnant with my first child. In college, ('89-'93) I met a wonderful man from New Zealand. A year later we started dating and two years later we got married. Six months after we got married we moved to New Zealand. This was in July 1993.
Fast forward 8 years. I had two children ages 3.5 and 1.5 I turned 30 and one night my legs were aching for no good reason except that I had been on the go all day. That's when I decided I needed to lose weight. I bought some scales, cut back on fat, and did my aerobics video 6 days a week. I started at 211 pounds. In 6 weeks I lost about 20 pounds, and then I got pregnant again. My exercise went out the window and I was nauseous most of the time, so I ate a lot. About one year later when my beautiful baby baby girl was about 4 months old, I started eating right and exercising again. I started out at 212 pounds. This time I did it for 7 months and lost 55 pounds before getting pregnant again. I didn't want to gain back all that weight, so I kept on exercising. Nothing strenuous or outside of the recommendations for pregnant women, but the baby died. They say it didn't happen because of the exercise, but I still wonder. I had three perfectly healthy babies, when I hadn't exercised at all during the pregnancy. The one pregnancy when I did--missed miscarriage. The baby died at 13 weeks, I had no symptoms, but when the heartbeat couldn't be found at 17 weeks, I had an ultrasound to see what was going on. After that I didn't care much about my weight or being healthy. All I wanted was to be pregnant again and that didn't happen for a year. It finally did and my fourth baby--a boy was born in Oct 2005. Six months later I started into my healthy living plan again. This time I started out at 220 pounds. I did really well again for 6 weeks and then lots of things changed all at once and we decided to move back to the USA after having been in New Zealand for 13 years. That derailed my plan pretty bad. I didn't start up again until January of this year.
