Weigh less than 170 lbs

Well, it’s been a rough few months. My younger brother’s shocking bout with anorexia prompted the family to bulk up on fattier foods to aid in his recovery, and unfortunately it bulked me up too. This morning, the scale informed me that I’m back up to 202.4 lbs. Yikes.

So I’m back at the weight loss journey, this time with the family in tow (very helpful). I’m using the My Fitness Pal iPod application for tracking, and it’s incredibly helpful. I’ve also got myself a new full-time job that requires walking around for 8 hours a day, which makes me considerably less sedentary than I was during the school year.

All I’m aiming for is to lose weight at a reasonable pace. I turn 20 in September, and while I don’t expect to be at my goal by then, I’m hoping to have made significant progress by then.

After years of daily heartburn, I finally clued in that might not be such a normal thing, and saw a doctor. Several tests later, I was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease – GERD. The good news is, I’ve been put on Prevacid to control my condition. The bad news is, I’ll be dependant on those pills for the rest of my life if I don’t do something about my weight.

Ideally, I should be around 140lbs, but for now 170lbs seems like a more attainable goal. I’ve got no choice now – I need to do this.

When I was 12 or 13 years old, I hit a height of 5’3 and a weight of 140lbs. And boy, did I feel fat. I was wearing size 8-10, depending on the brand, but I was going to school in a very small, experimental program for kids with high IQs, and the only other girls in there were stick-thin size 0s. Looking back, I realize that I was a perfectly healthy weight back then, but at the time, I felt enormous and ungainly compared to my few female friends.

In all of this, I developed a “screw it” attitude. I was already fat, so it didn’t matter if I ate junk. I was bad at sports, so what was the point of doing them? To make matters worse, I developed serious sleep issues that prevented me from reaching my predicted height of 5’8; I never grew again, and I’m 5’3 to this day, at nearly 19 years old.

All through high school, I knew on some level that I was gaining weight, but it happened so gradually that I didn’t give it much thought. I didn’t weigh myself routinely because I didn’t want to know. Around the end of my high school career, I was wearing a size 14, so I imagined that I had probably put on around 30lbs; I was shocked to climb onto a scale and see 210 pop up. Both fortunately and unfortunately for me, being a proportional hourglass shape, my 70lb weight gain had only boosted me up two or three dress sizes, and left me with a relatively slim waist, which helped me to ignore it through the years.

The summer after high school, I decided I’d had enough. Halfway through the summer break, I met with my doctor. He recommended that I gradually get down to 170lbs. I started counting calories, eating no more than 1600 per day, and doing moderate exercise a few times a week, and when school started 6 weeks later I was at 195lbs. I wasn’t always careful with my eating and exercise during the busy school year, but I managed to stay at 195, and that’s where I sit now.

Now I think it’s time to get the other 25lbs off. I’m going back to counting calories, and now I want to try my hand at jogging. I’m starting on the “Couch to 5k” routine next week to see if that helps.

Wish me luck!