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