The Hows and Whys you get fat - the chubby chic's confessions - a goodbye to my dear friend!

[toddlermominoma]

So, I've started working out, exercising, getting healthy, even eating right! It occurs to me as I took my measurements this last week how much I've changed: lost 3 inches from the waist, 1.5 inches from the biceps, 1 inch from each - the bust, hips and thighs! I've lost 5 lbs too! Then I realized that I needed to loose more than weight, more than inches.

In the spirit of the new life I hope to have, I need to shed all my poundage. So, I'm going to lay it all out there for all to see. The "hows and why" of how I got fat to begin with. If I want to start over, I need to really start over! So, here goes....

I was born to a couple of drug and alcohol addicted people! It's not the best way to start a life but, it was mine. My father, left when i was a year old and my mother didn't get physically sober until I was 6. I say physically because anyone whose grown up in "the program" can tell you that it's called a dry drunk. When they haven't touched the stuff but, still have the mentality or personality for it. She just traded in the alcohol and drugs for men and cigerettes. She picked the wrong kind of men who were either physically and/or emotionally abusive to my little sister and I.

In the middle of this. I was sexually abused by a neighbor's son, the one everyone trusted. He abused at least a dozen children at the time. This continued for years before I finally said anything when we moved across town. He was a popular kid in town and since my mother had sobered up, we were the outcasts. So, out of fear, we kept our mouths shut.

Here's the ugly truth for those of us who've been abused like that, what they don't often say, what people don't often tell you.....at some point we feel digusting because what they did to us felt good on a physical level. I say this because some of what happens is designed to make a person feel good. If you did it with your boyfriend or husband you wouldn't think twice! So, here as a child, your left with a moment where something felt good and it was wrong and you know it's wrong. And everything else is scary, disgusting and wrong. Sometimes for the unlucky few, it's even painful. Not to mention, that in any way, shape or form, it's absolutely humiliating. And you grow up with all this inside of you.

So, as the years of one kind of abuse or another continued I ate and hid in my room reading book after book after book. Afraid to go out into the other room with my mother's boyfriend or afraid to go play for fear that the man who abused me would be out there. Even as the years passed I ate. I was completely apposed to doing or trying to smoke, drink or do drugs. My parents had cured me of EVER wanting to do those things! What I did not see was that I was doing what they had, only I had done it with food!

Right around my thirteenth birthday, I was walking home from school one day. I passed by the grocercy store in town. Saw a bunch of boys standing around this car. The crowd kind of parted and when I saw these eyes, you never forget the eyes, I almost threw up. Only what made this worse was the look had changed, it was like that of a tiger or lion as they're hunting their prey! EVERYDAY after school from then on, he'd be waiting for me, leaned against his car!! I was bound and determined to not give up my power to him again. So, I walked casually past him till I was out of sight of the parking lot, then run like hell to my home. How did I cope?? You guessed it, by eating!! Did I tell anyone?? NO, don't know why but, I was embarassed to admit that I was afraid of him.

We moved that summer, thank God but, only a couple blocks away. He was also arressted then. Arrested for raping two women and attempting to rape another!! I told the police everything and when I asked them to tell him, they said he flinched - the only reaction they'd ever gotten out of him! I drug my mother to his sentencing, determined to take something back from him. When he saw me.....it was great! I should've known then, how strong I could be!!

 

Obviously because of that, when I got into middle school and highschool and boys began to find me attractive and I them, I panicked and knew that if I was fat, they'd want nothing to do with me and I wouldn't have to go down that road with them. So, I ate some more.

 

Flash forward, actually lost some weight several years ago but, hit a really rough patch with my husband, then my boyfriend. So, I put on a little more weight. Then my son was born a couple of years later. All the surgeries and hospital stays, the health scares, the neurological issues....I ate some more.

 

Then one day, I heard third stage congestive heart failure in reference to my mother. My son sitting on the floor of the doctor's offive playing.....it echoed in my head. My son had fought so hard to stay here and be here for me. I held him for hours, days and weeks just so he wouldn't leave me.... I remember them having to physically make me let go of him and pass him on. I was so terrified that he'd go and I wouldn't be there! Now, how selfish was I?? I wanted him here with me, I had two parents in congestive heart failure and I'm eating whatever, whenever I wanted!

When I got home, I looked in the mirror. I mean I really looked in the mirror, climbed up on the toilet, lifted my shirt, pulled my pants down past my hips....and cried and cried. Got on the scale and it said 332 lbs!!! I cried some more. That next day, I went on the diebetic diet the nurtitionist had set up for me the year DW was born. I was NOT going to die before I could see my beautiful son grow to be whatever he wanted, nor would I miss his children playing in my home because I didn't have self control enough to put down a fricking long john!!

Three months later, 50 lbs was gone!! Needless to say that I did go off the diet around the holidays that year but, I'd lost 100 lbs and found out that I was pregnant too!

Now, that JD is done breastfeeding and I can eat things like soy or dairy or whatever I really need to, to work this all off. I decided to really do it this time and not only go back on the diet but, to work out. Get rid of it all. And all of it means to shed the emotional BS too!

Now, my husband and I are having problems and we have been for years now, ever since DW started having issues three years ago and if I'm honest, it started a bit before then too. BUT, I'm not going to do what I've always done this time. I'm going to look at my kids' faces and know that I CAN'T do that to them. This time, I'm holding myself accountable by putting it out there for the whole world to see and shedding everything that's EVER held me back! I'm going to live and my son, both my sons need me to be strong and healthy and I'm going to do it.

So, there it all is. I've gotten it all off my chest, out of my being and it no longer matters to me. For those that read this, do what you will with it. It's long and more of a theraputic thing for me to do right now. But, this is how you get fat!! You eat slowly over the years, either to fill some imaginary hole or to hide behind it or because it becomes and addiction. You don't notice it, it happens so slowly. One day, you just wake up and you're over 300 lbs!! You'll never know how it happens really, you'll never know how it feels either until you've been there. And everytime it's time to maybe take it off, you get scared. The fat has become a part of you, you no longer know what to do without it. If you've been fat enough for long enough, it's become a dear friend, you don't know who you are without it.

I'm writing this tonight to say goodbye to my "dear friend", while you have been there for me over the last thirty-one years, you are hurting me and will take me from my family one day. I cannot and will not allow this to happen.

Goodbye old friend! Hope to never see you again! :)

[bridgeh2o]

Sep. 21, 2009 at 11:58 PM So sorry u had to got thru all u did. Just wanted to thank u for sharing! I know that this will help someone other than urself! Stay strong!