Who is making her comeback in 2013? THIS GIRL

Weighed in last night for my first week back at weight watchers. I lost 8.4 pounds. BAM!!! Look at me go.

Jessica

keeping it real

I just had to submit a reading log for my nutrition class and thought I would share the cold hard truth with all of you.

Weight management is a wonderful topic to cover. I was very excited about this chapter of learning. I have struggled with weight my entire life. When I was a teenager I always had body issues. I was a healthy weight but because all my friends were a size 0, 3, or 5, I started body shaming myself as young as age 12.

          I have struggled with an eating disorder that I wasn’t even aware at the time was considered one. I used to binge eat and then swallow a ton of laxatives to try to get rid of the excess food. I did this for about 3 years around the ages of 26-29. The funny and depressing thing is it never made me skinnier. I was about 170 pounds during this time.

          I have been on all ends of the weight spectrum. I have been as small as a size 7 and as large as a size 24. I am the real life Oprah who yo-yo diets through my entire life. I have tried many different diet fads throughout the years. The most success I ever had on a diet was with weight watchers. That program helped me get from 254 pounds to 170 pounds. I went from a size 22 to a size 12. After that experience, I thought I could diet on my own and stopped attending meeting. Fast forward 4 years and I am now at my heaviest weight of all time- tipping the scales at 287.6 pounds. I am morbidly obese.  I joined weight watchers 2 days ago and know I have what it takes to turn this around. Yesterday I went to get an MRI and I was so fat I could not fit in the hole without my arms squishing in on me.

          At a point of extreme desperation 2 years ago, I attempted to take phentermine diet pills. I went to red mountain weight loss and they gave me a prescription every month. The pills made me lose my appetite. They also made my mouth extremely dry and came with crippling migraines. I lost 12 pounds my first month, 7 pounds my second and then the weight loss stalled. I also started to get heart palpitations. I had to go see a cardiologist who hooked me up to a heart monitor and diagnosed them as PVC’s. I had more than 148 heart palpitations in a 24 hour span. To this day I still get them randomly. For anyone who has never experienced heart palpitations, they are the weirdest sensation in the world. I had them constantly for over a year after I stopped the use of phentermine. I have never been as unhappy in my life as I was when my heart did that. There was a point where I actually felt comforted with the idea of dying to no longer feel the palpitations. I will never touch another diet pill in my life.

          I was very excited to take a nutrition class as the recommended elective for my degree. I felt that with proper knowledge maybe I would stop hurting myself and stop hating myself. I hope to learn how to make my body my friend instead of the enemy. I want to learn how food works for good and not use it as an abuse towards myself. I know that healthy eating and proper diet have as much to do with what is wrong in my head as much as it is about proper nutrition. I know I have to fix more than what I am putting in my mouth to make any real changes.

Can I be the next J-Hud?

I joined Weight watchers last night. I have done this program once before with huge success (84 pounds lost) and many other times with no significant success. Why is this time going to be different? Because this time, I really want it. I will lose 84 pounds again plus more. WATCH ME =) As Jennifer Hudson so clearly put it in her book- I GOT THIS!

J

My fat ass moment (Jessica)

Have you ever had that aha! moment where you really get a kick in the ass to motivate you to do better in the weight loss department? You would think that all the health problems associated with my weight would be a good jump start, but apparently I am as vain and superficial as the next person... The aha! moment for me was a picture I was tagged in from the past weekend. I went to a baby shower, had my photo taken and then it was plastered on facebook. I did my best to make sure there are no traces of it on there anymore as I am ASHAMED of my lard ass body.
Because I am using this forum to be completely honest with myself and with you, I am sharing this mortifying picture with all of you now....

Have you ever been so far down that you have no idea how to pick yourself up again? Have you ever had reality slap you in the face? I knew I was FAT. I knew i was OBESE. This picture painted the true reality of just how bad I really let myself go =(

This will forever be my BEFORE picture because I refuse to let this be me any longer

Why does every moment have to be so hard? (Jessica)

          It’s not only my weight that I struggle with in life. I feel like every moment of my existence is an uphill battle. My son’s dad cheated on me with my brother’s fiancée 7 years ago and my life has been one fight after another since then. Everything was in his name so I lost EVERYTHING. I had to move back in with my mother and pick up my life starting from square one at age 25 with a 3 year old in tow. The custody and child support was a messy battle that still rears its head more often than I would like.

 I have 2 jobs most of the time because I am not qualified enough for one good one so that I do not have to work so damn hard all the time to barely scrape by in life. I lived on my own from 2010-2012 and I loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, I could not afford to keep living without help so I had to go back home to my mother at age 32 with a 10 year old in tow. I have managed a tanning salon for 8 years. I am great at customer service and sales. I hire, I fire, I make a schedule, and I am responsible for the success of my location. You think this would look good on a resume but all anyone sees is tanning salon and they laugh at me. I work hard, but I get paid crap.  I apply for a new job every Monday. Actually, I apply for like 50 jobs every Monday but I am still stuck here. I nanny 2 weekends a month just to enjoy the little things like movies and lunch with my son or a friend.

I apply for food stamps and they make me jump through hoops. I make $10 an hour to raise a child and I can not qualify for help. I pay into a system that only helps those who refuse to help themselves while others who try as hard as they can to make it work do not get help. I think DES needs to change their policy to only helping people who actually work but fall short in life. We should stop aiding the lazy and helping them live better than the working poor. I used to get $84 a month in food stamps, now I get $0. Do you know what $84 buys for a single mother and her child? CRAP. Ramen noodles, cheap frozen dinners, canned foods, milk and bread. Imagine trying to lose weight when you can not afford anything aside from processed garbage. Imagine having to feed this to your child and watching his waist size enlarge by the months.

His father very rarely pays child support and thinks it is okay that we live like this. Meanwhile, he sits in $400,000 home with his toys and gadgets eating well all while telling me he owes me nothing because he takes care of his son when he is over there.  He is okay with Aaron(son) living poor in one home and well off in another.

My mom went through breast cancer shortly after the break up. My aunt is going through ovarian cancer right now. The women in my life are sick. That breaks my heart everyday. This also puts me at higher risk for cancer and guess what? I have no insurance.

I feel like everything that I do is a fight. I can’t ever just have a break in life and it sucks. With all the hills I climb emotionally on a day to day basis it is no wonder I have no mental energy left to climb a real hill and lose this weight. I just have nothing left at the end of the day to actually try.

These are many of the reason’s I am a self hater. Everything is hard and everyone walks away. (Or gets sick).

That all said- I have followed weight watchers all week. I am doing well so far. Let’s just hope I can keep it in me for the long haul.

Kelly - halfway there... I think.

Hi, I'm Kelly. :)

Short version of my back story: in 2008 I reached my highest weight of 232#, and my boyfriend at the time was well over 300# (our scale only went up to 300 and he maxed it out). We actually had a discussion over chicken Alfredo about how we needed to change the way we were eating and get our asses into shape. We learned a lot in those first 2 years but we didn't lose too much weight, because we would always "fall off the wagon" and then have to "get back on track" I'd lose 10 or 15 pounds, feel really good, then eat total crap and think that it wouldn't come back, but it did... usually with friends. So I've been in a constant state of "trying to lose" for YEARS. Earlier this year i had managed to lose over 50# and then something went wrong in my head and i lost my drive.

It started with emergency gall bladder surgery at the beginning of February that put me on my butt for 6 weeks. i gained about 8#. Then at the end of march i was told that the job i had been training for and working for was filled by an outside applicant. I was CRUSHED. This also happened to be about a month before i got married and went on my honeymoon, and the stress of losing that job, and the preparations for the trip sent me another 10# up the scale. Then i got back from the honeymoon, tried to get over the job thing, but i couldn't seem to get my groove back, and by this time i was really enjoying the HIGH from comfort and stress eating. I've been consistently weighing myself every Friday morning for the last 2 months and i am maintaining between 193-197#. The lowest i had made it before i started re-gaining was 178#.

I know I can do better.

After all the things I've tried to make losing weight easier, I've figured out that what works for me is cutting my calorie intake to between 1200-1500 per day, and exercising at least 5 days a week. Walking totally counts, but i also run intervals, hike, and do yoga. I only "cheat" on weigh in day, but i track every bite and i also do my one of my biggest workouts of the week on that day. I use an AP on my phone to track my food that talks to my step counter gadget that i bought a week ago, and tomorrow is my first weigh in after tracking all week, and trying to walk my 10,000 steps a day. I will report it, and every weigh in on Friday's here from now on.

I'm looking forward to being DONE "TRYING" to lose weight.

The ME I used to be. (Jessica)

Hello World! Welcome back. 
I have not always been the fat girl. I have been the skinny girl, the chubby girl who thought 10 extra pounds made me fat, the REALLY chubby girl and the obese girl. I have been on every side of the scale. My lowest was 135lbs- my highest is my current weight of 271. My old FAT number was 254.  When my fiancee and son's father cheated on me and broke my heart (more on that later), I tipped the scales at 254. I was mortified with this number and decided to change something. I lost 20 pounds without even trying from sheer sadness. When you are busy crying your eyes out, you forget to do simple things like eat. BEST DIET EVER. (kidding). So as the weight came off, I felt a bit less worthless.
 I whittled my way down to 170lbs using weight watchers. To this day weight watchers is the only program that has really worked for me. But as we all struggle with weight know- unless your heart and mind are into it- you will never lose weight with any program. You have to decided you ARE worth it. I have been so busy hating myself up to 271 pounds that I didn't think I was worth it. But, starting this blog makes me realize someone out there is struggling just as I am and that person is worth it so I must be worth it too! I will have to be accountable to everyone on here so I have to make a change. 
I read a passage this morning that posed the question- "Imagine your life 20 years from now. Are you doing the things you want to do and living the life you want to live? Make the changes today that need to be made for a better tomorrow."

The Jessica I used to be was a free spirit. She lived by her own rules and danced to the beat of her own drum. She was outgoing, charasmatic and fun to be around.( below pic 170lbs)

 The Jessica I am now is a shell of the person I used to be. I am a homebody who watches life from the sidelines. If I look at my life in 20 years I see a VERY old 52 year old woman who is obese and walking with a walker (arthritis). I do not want that future for myself. I want to be the Jessica who would lap dance a random guy in a bar if I felt like it (although it's not so classy to do that anymore). I want to be the ME I used to be.

I started weight watchers again today. I will weigh in with all of you each Monday. 
Because I am so big, I start off with tons of points. 41 daily points plus. This should be easy to follow if I just remember that I am worth it.