Introductions

As you can see in the About Me box, I'm 28, obese and angry. :-P  While these things are true, there's a little more to the story.  I've struggled with weight my whole life and have had a food addiction for most of it.  I learned these behaviors in childhood from my mother, who used food to deal with her feelings of inadequacy, etc.  (She came from a verbally abusive home, and was sexually molested by her father, so she had good reason for her mental instability.  Then she went and married my dad, who she'd only known for three months, and who is very controlling, like his mother was.)  I've spent most of my life extremely depressed, unhappy and disgusted with myself.  I've tried to lose weight, but I've never been successful in the long term.  In the past year, I've been doing a lot of "soul searching" and have been trying to deal with the issues behind my emotional eating.  I bought Debbie Danowski's book 

The Emotional Eater's Book of Inspiration: 90 Truths You Need to Know to Overcome Your Food Addiction, and that has been very helpful.  It has been suggested to me before to consider gastric bypass surgery, but I've always refused that, and there is one simple reason; it won't fix the problem!!!  The problem is in my head!

So, that's what my quest is now, fixing my problem, my faulty relationship with myself, and with food.  Recently, I had an epiphany.  I wrote this in an email to my mother:

• I was looking at a student, thinking I wish I could be that size, just normal.  Then I thought it's so much work!  And then I thought does it really take any more effort to be healthy than it does to be unhealthy?  And I realized that it doesn't.  And then I had the disgusting realization at how much effort, how much work I've gone to to make myself what I am.  IT'S SICK!  It literally made me ill to think about it!

The other realization I had was that, like everyone else I wanted a fast solution, but the fact is, it has taken me twenty eight years to get here, how can I expect to undo that overnight?  I find it so strange that I am such an emotional person, and I place such importance on feelings, I feel things so strongly, and I am afraid to feel my feelings, so I've been stuffing them down and covering them up, numbing myself.  That's on of the reasons I'm making this blog, in order to have a creative outlet for those emotions, and somewhere to pour my heart out.  I also hope that as I make my journey, I might encourage someone else who is struggling along the way.  We're in this together!

So, I'm going to be completely open and honest here.  This is where I'm starting: 396 lbs, size 38W, my hips are about 68 in, my waist about 52.

Here's looking forward!