I grew up as the youngest of 5 boys and 4 girls.  I’m 24, have a son born in August of ’07 and married a freakin’ awesome dude in May of ’06. I grew up in Ohio, went to college in Utah, lived in California for a couple years and now am in Arkansas.

At age 9 or 10 I turned into a really ugly fat kid for a handful of years.  Enter body image issues.

Even after puberty hit, I still was larger than most of my classmates, and struggled with body-image.  By 16 or 17 I became very active and slimmed down, but I still had that nagging” OMG I’M SO FAT” when I’d play ultimate-frisbee and all the other girls would run around in their sports bras while I was in my baggy t-shirt.

My senior year I packed some weight back on, and my boyfriend’s friends came to me and told me that I was too fat and ugly for him.  I didn’t know whether to be upset or angry.  He was a jerk anyway- forget him.  Move on with my weight issues and I tried to drop some weight, mostly unsuccessfully. My 18th birthday:

Flash-forward to college.  I had a boyfriend who more or less told me that my weight was a big issue for him.  Are we noticing a trend? I looked like this at my heaviest in college my freshman year:

Then something in me switched mid-sophomore year.  I wanted to look HOT.  It wasn’t about health, it wasn’t about anything other than wanting to be as pretty on the outside as I felt inside.  At the time I took these photos, I still felt like a fatty.  Now, I’d LOVE to look like I did when I was 19. I was active, I had confidence, I felt good.

I met my husband in 2005 and got married in ’06.  He is supportive and a wonderful man.  I gained weight very quickly after we met as  I was struggling with depression and hormonal imbalances.  When I met my husband I was about 160 pounds.  Here I am about 180ish.

A year later at our May wedding I was about 195.

By Christmas I had somehow gained 40 more pounds, and during that month I became pregnant. I knew I had gained a tremendous amount of weight but it didn’t really settle in.

I had a rough pregnancy.  I was told that my son wouldn’t live through the birthing process, and in the 5% chance he did have to live, he’d be severely handicapped and not likely live long.  I was on partial bed-rest as he was trying to come at 27 weeks along.  I went into labor at 37 weeks and 280 lbs and had an emergency c-section after 19 hours of labor.  Because of the circumstances of his birth, I got a very severe infection and was unable to walk unassisted for almost 2 1/2 months after my c-section.  This is me visiting my son in the NICU about a month after he was born. IFinding photo, will post later)

That was almost 2 years ago.  My little boy turns 2 in a few weeks and I still sit at the same weight as then.  I am 5’4 and 269 pounds.  It never really hit me how big I was until about a year ago.  I avoided pictures of anything below the neck at all costs.  And then my friend posted this picture of us at her baby shower.  She was 8 months pregnant and my waist still probably dwarved hers.  It hit hard.  I looked at the photo and didn’t even recognize the woman with my eyes as being me.  That’s not who I am.  That’s not how I feel. (Also finding photo-will post later)

And there have been subsequent photos of me since then that give me the same reaction.  It disgusts me, worries me, but never motivates me.  I need help with the part where I get off my butt and do something about it.  Inside me is this healthy, energetic, fun 24 year old screaming to get out. 
4TH of July 2009

These are supposed to be my great years! I see the smile on my face in that second picture and I can FEEL the hollowness it represents. I want to have the energy to play with my little boy, he really deserves it. I want to feel confident with my husband…and to be able to believe him when he tells me he thinks I’m beautiful. I don’t want to constantly worry about my weight being the reason why I feel sick and tired all the time.  My body is screaming that there is something wrong and that I need to fix it.  My journey needs to begin but I have been so overwhelmed by how much weight I have to lose that I haven’t even wanted to begin.

My intention here? Bare. It. All.

I’ll be tracking my journey towards a healthy lifestyle, and the rollercoaster of emotions that goes along with it.  Not entirely sure I am comfortable with my father-in-law…or anyone I know at all except maybe DH reading that.

I would LOVE to have support and hear from anyone out there that is doing the same thing-or has found secrets to motivation and success to a healthy lifestyle.  And by “healthy” I don’t mean just the 100+ pounds I want to lose, (Oh, Hi, I’m actually fat.) but mental health, self-confidence and just plain self-preservation that comes along with the territory of being a stay-at-home-mom.

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