Nick P.
Hi!
You may know me as Nick, or you may not know me at all. I want to give you some background.
I was born in 1981. I was a fairly normal active kid until about 2nd grade. It was about that time that my eating started to outpace my playing. At the time my parents were struggling thru a rotten relationship, and I was starting to learn I was miserable at athletics, but very good at academics.
I tried athletics my entire childhood. Everything I tried outside of Tennis was an embarrassing failure. The only time I ever got on base when I played baseball was when I got hit by the ball. I found myself dreading the game, but I would go anyway, cuz win or lose we got candy at the end. Like most kids I did soccer as well. My claim to fame was being the guy in the back who would jump over the ball to get away from it rather than kick it. Again, it was the oranges at halftime that kept me coming back.
In gradeschool I was not only the fat kid, but the smelly one as well. My parents decided to go to college, and we were very poor. To no fault of my mother, I was lazy and not at all hygenic. I went through some pretty serious times being made fun of at school, but made up for it with being smart and witty, which has kept me going even now. Since we were poor we ate "poor food". Tons of pasta and ramen noodles with the occasional 99cent Totino's party pizza.
6th grade was about where I lost it. I could not wear jeans and my family could not afford to keep buying larger jeans for me. I wore sweatpants...everyday. I was THAT kid. There came a time where the sweatpants elastic band dug so deep into my skin that I would breakout in sores...at age 11.
When I went to junior high I was very large for a kid. I dove into more social outlets that did not involve athletics. I got into drama and choir, which found me friends and helped grow my personality. I also continued to gain weight, in large amounts. By 8th grade I weighed 220 pounds.
Highschool I found my niche as the funny fat guy. It is so stereotypical it isn't even funny anymore. I was quite popular and very involved in school. My academics and social life were at an all time high. I had a steady girlfriend that was gained on personality alone. I continued to gain weight, and was 260 by the time I went to college. I wore size 46 pants when I graduated that dug into my gut.
College is when I really lost control. Long nights of studying, and the discovery of alcohol propelled my weight to the point of no return. I, much like I do now, wore a vest to try and disguise all of my weight. My jeans had this problem of wearing out the crotch to holes in no time. I had the embarrassing task of asking my mother to sew them up to last me a bit longer. I wore clothes that barely fit me, and I found I could not find a hat that would go on my skull. When I left college I weighed 330 pounds.
Since college I have yo-yoed with different diets and various stopgap measures. I now weigh my lifetime high of 352 pounds and decided that enough was enough. I am currently preparing for Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass. I spent a lot of time researching to come to this decision. I did not find many sites discussing what people went thru with this struggle, so I wanted to talk about what has happened to me, and what will continue to happen in the process.
