How I Got Started

     After making the decision to lose the weight instead of the spinal tap my next step was figuring out how I wanted to lose weight. I headed to the Borders book store at the mall in the town next to mine. Do you realize just how many diets are out there?!? Low carb, liquid, vegetarian, flexitarian, low calorie, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins the list goes on and on and on.

     Amongst all of these get slim quick schemes there was a food journal. The first few pages described how the book worked, how to determine how many calories you need based on your build and height, and there were even a few tips on how to cut back on calories. For $3.99 why not try it?

     I started tracking every  bite I took religiously. I had my notebook, ink pen, and calculator on my kitchen counter to figure up the calories in my recipes every night. Inside of this food journal they had a fitness section as well. I started buying fitness equipment and turned our spare bedroom into my own personal gym. I bought hand weights, a kettlebell, a medicine ball, a balance ball, a mini trampoline, my sister gave me her treadmill, and I was also given a Nordic Track Leg Shaper. With all these new tools I got to work. Within the first two months I'd lost a little over 20 pounds. And then came the holiday season.

     Every diet I have ever been on has been ruined by the holiday season. I just cannot say no to all of the yummy food! Needless to say my diet went straight out the door. Once the new year rolled around I had gained back half of the weight I worked so hard to lose. I spent all of January and most of February trying to come up with a plan to get back on track.

     Around the middle of February 2010 I received the best gift in the world! A brand new laptop computer and wireless Internet. As soon as the Internet was turned on I googled diet websites and came up with one I thought looked cool calorieking.com. I emailed my sister to see if she'd ever used this site and if she liked it. She said she'd never used that one but there was a website she'd used in the past that she really liked. It was called sparkpeople.com. As soon as I read her email I immediately went the the site. Hallelujah!!! I finally found the plan that was going to work for me. I felt like I was at home. Not even ten minutes after joining I was receiving Goodies and welcome messages from total strangers.

     SparkPeople.com was/is my answer! A couple of weeks after joining I bought the best selling book by Chris Downie called The Spark. That was hands down the best $20.00 I've EVER spent. I read the entire book the day I bought it. Within the first two chapters everything suddenly made sense. Healthy weight loss isn't about food, exercise, and especially not fad diets. Healthy weight loss is about fixing what's broken inside before you can start on the outside.

     There are questions in this book for you to answer like "If you could take yourself anywhere right now where would you go", and "what would your body look like, what activities would your day include"? Then it moves onto goal setting techniques and your core values and beliefs. I know you're probably thinking "how in the Hell do these things have anything to do with weight loss"?!? Well my response is EVERYTHING! I really don't know how to explain it. You'd have to read the book yourself to fully understand the power it has.

     After reading the book I started my goal lists, my fastbreak week, and meeting new people. Things just took off from there. I am now seven months in and I've lost 42 pounds so far. It should have been a lot more than 42 pounds but I've hit a few bumps here and there. In the past my little slip ups would have totally derailed everything for me, but since I've joined SparkPeople I now realize that it's okay to fuck up. It happens to everyone. In the end the only thing that really matters is that you get back up and keep going.

My Story Part Two

     A few years ago I started having some pretty frightening problems. My vision started to change dramatically, I was having terrible headaches on a daily basis, I kept seeing dark things floating all around, and my vision would go in and out constantly. I was like somebody turned off the lights and flipped them back on. S-C-A-R-Y shit! I went on with this problem keeping it my own little secret. I didn't tell anyone for at least a month. I finally decided to go to my eye doctor to find out how much it would costs for an exam. Let's just say I left in tears because I knew I couldn't afford to go. I visited both doctors in my town and  there weren't any kind of payment plans for either one. I headed to my local health department to see if I could sign up for some sort of government assistance. I live with my fiance and he makes over $35,000.00 a year so I didn't qualify for government assistance.

     I was so pissed of when I left that building. There are so many people out there that I know personally who get government checks and medical care and they use their food stamps and money to pay for drugs. But yet here I am an unemployed woman with no kids and no drug habits with a possibly life threatening problem and I don't qualify for assistance because my fiance makes too much money. I should have told them that I was homeless!

     After visiting all of these places and realizing that I couldn't take care of this on my own I drove to my mom's and told her my symptoms in tears the whole time. By Christmas she and my grandma had gotten together enough money to pay for my eye appointment. The next week I called to schedule. Two months later I was sitting in the waiting room with butterflies going ape shit in my tummy. After filling out the forms to update my file they called me back to check for glaucoma and the test where you push the button whenever you see the little light flash. Next I went back for my exam. The doctor already seemed concerned with the pictures they took of the inside of my eyes. She dilated my pupils and took a peek with her little lighted microscope thingy. She sent me back for more eyeball pictures and called me back into the room. She showed me the pictures of the back of my eyes. The ends of my nerves were huge and red. I started crying like a baby because I just knew that there was something wrong and I knew that I couldn't afford to get it taken care of.

     The doctor told me that she wanted me to see an optical neurologist as soon as possible. I was sitting there thinking oh my God I am going blind! I informed her that I could barley even afford to get into her office let alone a neurologist. She said the best thing to do would be to go into the ER at OSU medical center. And she wanted me to go first thing the next morning.

     Well that night I couldn't sleep. There was so much shit going through my mind I couldn't even close my eyes. I pretty much sat up all night crying. I was finally ready to fall asleep around 7am. And the phone rang. It was my doctor calling from her house asking if I'd made it to OSU yet. I told her I was getting up right now. My fiance and I got dressed and headed out the door. I should probably mention that it was the coldest day in Ohio weather history. It actually hurt to breathe it was so cold. Kevin started the car and all of the sudden slushy antifreeze started spraying everywhere. He shut off the car and I went inside to call the doctor and let her know what had happened. She actually offered us her car! That is when I really started to panic. My doctor is offering me her very own car? That must mean this thing is even more serious than I had thought! I declined and told her I'd have my sister take us. She asked me to call her when I got out of the hospital.

     So here we are my fiance, sister, grandma, and I sitting in the ER waiting room of the busiest hospital in our state on a Friday night. We sat there for at least five hours! I finally decided that I couldn't wait any longer. I hadn't been to sleep, I had a headache, and I hadn't eaten all day. So I signed myself out and we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner before we went home. While we were eating my doctor called to see how everything went. When I told her they were too busy and I didn't get called back she actually sounded disappointed that I hadn't stayed. Come on lady! It's Friday night in our state capitol and I am sitting in ER. Give me a break!

     A couple of days went by and I received yet another phone call from the doc. This time she wanted me to see the doctor at the town clinic because she could give me a referral to a neurologist. The awesome thing was it only cost me $10.00! She pretty much told me that I needed to lose some weight and gave me some crappy diet tips. But she sent a fax the the optical neurologist at OSU medical center. That's all I really cared about.

     A few days after my appointment I received the paper work in the mail that I had to bring with me to my appointment. It was pretty much family history, my medical history, that sort of thing. A week later I was in the car at 6am on my way to see the neurologist and my cell phone rings. It's the doctors assistant calling to inform me that they have to reschedule my appointment because the doctor's wife was in labor. What the fuck people?!? I am possibly dying here and you have to reschedule?

     This happened one more time before I actually got to see him. I don't remember the second reason. Before my appointment they called and said that if I didn't show up they'd refuse to see me. Are you fucking serious?!? You're the one that canceled on me!

     Like a month later I was FINALLY able to see the doctor. He did his own little exam and saw what my doctor saw but he didn't think it was a big deal. He scheduled me for an emergency brain scan for the next morning. I went in for the scan and headed back to his office right after. They emailed him the results and hallelujah there was nothing abnormal!!!!

     So what why was I experiencing all of the crazy problems? Because of my weight I produce too much spinal fluid. With nowhere else to go it hangs out in my head causing pressure on my brain and the nerves on the back of my eyes. What were my options? There is either a spinal tap, which I chickened out of at the last second or weight loss.

     My vote was/is weight loss.

My Story Part One

Summer 2006
300 Pounds

     So you're probably wondering how on earth 23 a year old got to be 264 pounds. Well I'll start by saying I used to weigh a lot more than that. At 19 years old I was pushing 300 pounds! And I am now 228 pounds. In this blog I will explain how I lost that 72 pounds and what I'm doing to lose the remaining 77 pounds. But for now here's my story.

     I was born in October 1986 to two wonderful people named Danny and Lona. I had a pretty normal childhood with a few exceptions. My parents used to fight. A LOT. And when I was six years old they divorced. It's sad to say even those situations are pretty normal these days.

     I can still remember the day they sat my sisters and I down to let us know that dad was going to be moving out. I remember asking when he was coming back. At that age I had no idea what in the heck divorce meant. When my dad explained to me that he wouldn't be coming home and that he would be getting his own house I remember being a little bit excited. Excited because I would have two homes to live in. How naive was I?

     Dad moved out and life went on. He started dating and within the first year he had gotten remarried. His second wife's name was Susan. My family liked to call her the red headed beast. She was a dental hygienist, she had tons of money, three kids, and a great big house. At first everything was great. Everyone got along and we were able to visit every weekend. But after a few months things started to change. She started "picking" on my sister and I. Her kids would make a mess, we were forced to clean it up. That sort of thing. After the picking came her drinking. She would drink and flip out on everyone. Especially my dad. Calling him names, telling him that he wasn't a "real" man. Not even married a year and the marriage was annulled.

     Right after there divorce my older sisters paternal father died. I was seven years old. I had no clue that we had different dad's. And apparently neither did she. He worked around grain bins where they store the corn for farm animals. He was clearing off the top step inside of one of the bins and fell off the edge. To put it simply he was suffocated by corn. When they finally drained the bin and got to his body he was curled up in a ball with his hands covering his face. My sister was crushed. Absolutely crushed. From that day on she stopped calling my dad, dad. She stopped going on weekend visits with my younger sister and I. And started skipping school.

     That was when things really started to change. There I was eight years old, my dad had been through two divorces and  I found out that my big sister was actually my half sister. That is when the weight started slowly creeping on. By age eleven I weighed almost 100 pounds. Kids at school were starting to poke fun and even people in my family had something to say. One memory I have is a boy named Derrick. We were waiting for our school bus and he called me a "Goodyear Blimp". His friends all started high fiving and giggling.

     My dad married yet again when I was fourteen. She was the big boobed, blond, twenty something. My sister and I both LOVED Deanne. She was funny, she was smart, she liked to go shopping, and she was just fun to be around. During there marriage was my "goth" faze. I died my hair black, I wore dark eyeliner, I would tight black clothes. During there marriage I was also getting into that boy crazy stage. Every week I was dating a different guy. I didn't have sex with any of them. It was more like hot steamy make out sessions with a bit of touching here and there. With all of these boys my mom went into protective parent mode. I wasn't allowed to have any guy friends. AT ALL! If I was caught near a boy she would rip my ass. With all these new rules came a LOT of rebellion and my new discovery of my bisexuality. Every time you'd look around I'd be sneaking out of my bedroom window to meet with boys. I was going to hang out with friends and not checking in when I was supposed to. I started stealing alcohol from the pantry and smoking the weed I found in my mom's closet. School was the last place I wanted to be but there was no getting out of it. So I went. Mostly because that's where my friends were. But my grades were terrible and I was constantly getting into fights.

     Next came the high school years. Not the worst out of all of my years but not the best either. My mom had gotten remarried. My dad had gotten married for the third time and I packed on some more pounds. My freshman year of high school I weighed in at a whopping 200 pounds. I made new friends and started actually trying in school. Life was getting much, MUCH easier. My junior year I met a guy named Kevin. We started hanging out and eventually began dating. In August 2004 he asked me to marry him. I moved in with him and his parents when I was seventeen. That's when the real weight gain began. Within the first year I weighed 235 pounds.

     In February 2005 Kevin and I got our first apartment together. I was soooo excited to have my own place! I could cook and clean and decorate my own space. A few short months later my life was changed FOREVER.

     I don't remember the date exactly but I do remember that it was warm outside and storming like crazy. I was sitting at my computer playing Free cell when my yellow and black Nextel phone rang. I flipped the lid to see who was calling. When I saw "Daddy" I the screen I had this gut feeling that something was wrong. I answered "Hello" his voice was already cracking when he said "hello baby girl". I said "what's wrong, or you okay"? All he said was "no". There was a moment of silence and whaling like a baby he said "I just can't do this anymore". Hearing those words brought tears to my eyes because I knew what was coming next. "Yes you can daddy! You are stronger than you think". "No honey I can't". With another long silence eventually he said "take care of your little sister for me". I started screaming and crying begging him to just talk to me and not hang up the phone. He said "I love you baby" and hung up on me. I was still screaming and sobbing while flipping through the contacts on my phone. There is was... Papaw! The entire time the phone was ringing I was praying that he was home. And there it was. "Hello". Still sobbing I said "get to daddy right now"! I was screaming so loud and crying so hard he couldn't understand a word I was saying. He said "what is it baby girl? Just calm down for a second so I can understand you." I repeated myself and he said "I'm running out the door as we speak" and hung up. I was still freaking out. I didn't know if he would make it on time. I called my mom and told her what happened and then I called Kevin at work to tell him and he decided to come home early. After I got off the phone with him my grandpa called and told me that he made it. And that dad was okay.

     That is the night that changed my life forever. After the phone call within four years I gained 65 pounds. I lost contact with all of my friends, I became paranoid about death.