Peggy M
I am 41 years old, (when did THAT happen? I was 25 yesterday!), happily married (almost 23 years) and have 2 great kids. Shelby, 22 and Matt 19. I have struggled with my weight all my life. My mom's family is heavy and she obsessed about her weight which led her to obsess about mine. I can't ever remember not being on a diet.
I went to a very small school (30 in my class) until 8th grade so my weight got me teased alot. (Peggy, the piggy, the peewee punk) I wasn't super heavy, just chunky enough to get teased. In 8th grade, we moved to the suburbs of KC and I went from a class of 30 to a class of 300. Talk about culture shock. I was an only child who lived on a farm and we moved to an actual neighborhood with actual people, not just cows!
But by then, my love affair with food was deeply established and I wasn't interested in going outside to play. Heck, I grew up NOT playing outside, and besides, in 8th grade, who wants to play? There were boys to look at and Pepsi's to drink and TV to watch.
My folks both worked hard so we didn't do too many family things together. My dad had 4 kids from his first marriage, so every penny they made went to child support. Which is the way it should have been. I never thought bad of dad's kids, I really liked them when we got to see them, which wasn't often.
Back to my love affair with food. I came by it honestly. My mom could cook a mean fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and biscuits. Yum. And family reunions were stocked with lots of food. Like I said, they were all heavy too. My dad's side were all apple shaped. No rear end or legs but big chests and bellys. And those get togethers were all about food also. It's just dad's side was a little meaner about weight. I remember dad telling me that my rear looked like two wild cats fighting in a gunny sack. (By the way, this is probably NOT the way to motivate your kid to lose weight-LOL)
So from the start, I loved food and hated exercise. Then came marriage and babies and lots of weight. Shelby was a month premature and still weighed 7lbs 9oz. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes with Matt and only gained 5 lbs. After he was born, I had actually lost 30! But boy, did I manage to find it again. I have tried just about everything. Gyms, Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Metabolife, on and on. Lose a little, gain it back and 20 to 30 more. The only thing I haven't tried is prescription meds. Probably only because my dr's never suggested them.
Now I'm at the age where grandkids will happen in a few years and I would like to live to see them. I really felt pretty good until about 3 or 4 years ago. Then I started to feel worse and worse. Like I was dying. About the same time, I started with a diabetes specialist and he started me on all those meds and Whoop! here comes more weight!
But I really noticed that I was becoming obsessed with my weight. It is all I think about, it makes me miserable. There are so many things I would like to do that I can't do because I'm big. I can't fly, ride roller coasters (which I wouldn't even if I were small!), walk into a room without thinking that everybody is looking at my size, worry about if the seatbelts in the car are going to fit...all that extra baggage.
If I were normal sized, my poor little brain would have so many other things to think about! Wouldn't that be nice? So this is where I am, ready for a change. Ready to start living life the way God intended for me to live. Ready to enjoy future grandchildren, future farm life, future draft horses, and all things that I have now that I don't enjoy as much as I should.
