I suppose I’m like alot of folks who are having an ongoing battle with heredity. 

While I don’t blame my heredity entirely, the fact of the matter is that my mother has fought her weight as long as I’ve known her (since 1968!) as has her sister/my aunt, both of /her/ daughters, etc.  My grandmother was overweight until my grandfather passed away, so you can see what I’m up against.  Add in the fact that I’m Jewish, I’m a Texan, and I LOVE food… you get the picture.

So I grew up in Houston and I remember rollerskating alot as a child.  I used to love going to horseback riding camp and tubing down the Blanco river.  I went to the neighborhood pool every summer with my brother and our neighborhood friends.  I was an average sized kid with an average, active lifestyle.   Then puberty hit.

I remember coming home after school during my teenage years when my brother and I would split an entire bag of tater tots for a /snack/.  I created alot of recipes using butter, smothered my food in ranch or miracle whip, and avoided vegetables like the plague.  When you’re a kid the last thing you want to hear is, “If you keep eating like that, you’ll be huge when you’re older!”  Unfortunately, it’s true.  I wasn’t athletic, prefering TV or to get lost in fantasy novels for endless hours.  I was maybe a size eleven, which was a huge embarassment compared to my size five friends.  I always felt like the big kid, even back then.

My first year in college I actually LOST the freshmen fifteen.  That’s because I was carless and went to Southwest Texas State in San Marcos, TX, which is in the heart of the hill country.  I walked everywhere and in the end lost 15 pounds.  Then I got depressed, was given my old station wagon to drive back and forth to Austin in, and I gained it right back plus some.  I spent the bulk of my twenties around 160 or so.

I moved to California in 1995 where I discovered the Internet, found a job there, and became involved with a guy who was thin as a rail and lived on fast food.  That was my downfall.  We lived on Taco Bell, McDonald’s and endless amounts of pizza.  This is where I began working at the California Ren Fest, where I found myself, where I was surrounded by fat people… and where I gained 60+ pounds.  We played Dungeons and Dragons every week surrounded by chips, cookies, donuts, and whatever else we could stuff into our faces as we gamed.

We were together five years.  He left when I lost my high-paying Techie job along with 450,000 of my closest and dearest friends.  He told me I was fat, lazy, and broke and he didn’t want to be the sole provider for us (because, of course, in the San Francisco area you can somehow live on the salary from a guy managing a pizza parlor.  Right.).  He left on October 1, 2001.   That year was the worst year of my life.  I lost my grandmother, I lost my job, I lost my boyfriend, and that also happened to be the year the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked and fell. 

I hate to say this, but I think those things happening to me were probably the best things that could have happened.  Sometimes you have to lose everything to figure out who you are and where you really need to be.   December 18th is my birthday and every year I give myself a birthday present.  That year I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and bought a 10 week membership to Weight Watchers.  I began going with one of my best friends, Kelley, who was a member with her husband.  I vividly remember the day she got her 70 pound star and he made lifetime!  They were very inspiring. 

I followed the plan to a “T”.  I wrote down everything.  Because I was on a very limited budget, I was extremely particular about what I bought.  However, because I was also single and living alone, I could stretch one meal into three.  I cut out soda first thing.  I stopped eating fast food.  My favorite lunch became a salad with steak and feta cheese.   I started working out to Billy Blanks Tae-Bo.  I began with the first “This is how you do Tae-Bo” tape and puked halfway through.  I refused to give up, though, and kept at it until I was able to get through the entire beginners workout, all 30 minutes of it, without stopping!

In March a harsh reality hit.  My unemployment was running out and I hadn’t found work yet.  I made the heartbreaking decision to move back home to Houston, to the security of my parents and the house I grew up in.  For me it felt like accepting failure, like taking a million steps backwards.  My next step was SUPPOSED to be a job paying $100k a year, for cripes sake!  Instead I had to depend on mommy and daddy like a teenager.  How humiliating!  

I gave up most of my personal belongings that I’d collected over the past 12 years of living on my own and packed up my four cats and a single 8-foot trailer full of everything I could cram into it and headed back to Houston.  Once I got here I was thrilled with the Weight Watchers leader that led the meetings my mother went to and had no problem joining right in.  I kept on plan for a bit after moving to Houston, even long enough to get my 35 pound star in April of 2002!  It soon began to falter, though, with my mother’s cooking (she uses a ton of margarine) and me making another tough decision to return to college to persue my bachelor’s degree. 

I was 33 and I was going to start my life all over.

The University of Houston had it’s own challenges.  Firstly, I didn’t walk all over campus to get to my classes.  I was an Art major and we were pretty much sequestered in the Art building.  Secondly, near the Art building was the UC Underground, which is basically a food court.  They had Starbucks, Smoothie King, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and other fast-food type restaurants.  They also had the brand new 9-million dollar Rec Center on the other side of campus!  Woohoo!

I worked out from time to time, but I was never very enthusiastic about being 200 pounds and being around the athletic, cheerleader type college girls in the Rec Center.  Instead I preferred to be working on my projects for class and grabbing food from the UC Underground with my classmates.  I’m very lucky I didn’t gain another 100 pounds!  I guess going to the meetings the entire time kept me at least within limits with portion control and away from the fried foods and mostly the sodas.  I’ve maintained my weight around 200 pounds since 2002.

I started working the Ren Fest in 2003.  I worked for a booth called Sofi’s Stitches for three seasons.  Now let me tell you, all of the velvet gowns in there are beautiful, as are the wenches costumes.  Let me also tell you that the woman who owns the company is skinny as a rail and has no sympathy for the larger folks.  I couldn’t wear any of the gowns, they looked horrible on me, so I settled for the wench wear.  However, I wore a corset I’d bought from her that was rather expensive and the boning popped out of it after only one weekend.  When the manager brought this to her attention and tried to get her to take it back, the boss said, “It wasn’t made to be worn by someone with your body type.”  Hello?  So you won’t take a faulty item back?  Since when does clothing come with a disclaimer??

I quit shortly thereafter.

I’ve been a member of match.com since my ex dumped me in 2001.  I’d had dates on and off, but somehow always ended up with really nice, really toothless guys.  No idea why.  In January of 2006 I recieved an email through match.com from this handsome redhead who had seen my profile and liked my pictures from the Ren Fest.  We exchanged emails and I finally met Anthony in person on February 4, 2006.   I thought he was a bit odd at first.  I mean, really, who doesn’t eat CHEESE??   He then took me on the best Valentine’s date I’ve ever been on and I was hooked.  I moved in with him in May of 2006.

My ex didn’t support me whatsoever in my weight loss journey.  When I cooked a recipe from a Weight Watchers book, he scoffed and said he wouldn’t eat “diet food”.  He was rude every time I ate fast food with him, even though he’d never eat what I cooked.  Anthony supports my every move with Weight Watchers and it’s one of the many reasons I adore him.  He works with me for what’s best for me in this situation.  That’s the way it SHOULD be!

I often say the best thing that happened to me was that I lost 145 pounds of ex-idiot.  If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have moved back to Houston, I wouldn’t have gone back to college, I wouldn’t have met Anthony.

I graduated from U of H with my BFA in Sculpture, Jewelry and Metalsmithing in December of 2006.  It took me 6 months to find a job after that, but I found one in July of 2006 and have a great job that I love.  The added bonus to my job is that my boss is very health-conscious.  He’s built us a gym right here at work with our very own team of personal trainers! 

On January 9, 2008 we had a health screening at work.   They weighed us all, gave us flu shots, drew our blood, and took our blood pressure.  I found out two things on that day.  First, I discovered that I am not as tall as I thought I was.   I thought I was 5′7″.  Turns out I was 5″5 1/2″ tall.  I also found out, after they sent me immediately to the doctor, that I have Stage 2 Hypertension.  Translated:  Dangerously severe high blood pressure.  My doctor immediately put me on medication to lower my blood pressure, changed my diet to a hard-core version of the Weight Watchers Core Plan, and ordered me to exercise regularly.  I am no longer allowed to eat anything with High Fructose Corn Syrup or refined sugar, I have to cut my sodium intake to no more than 2 tablespoons a day (including NATURAL sodium), and I had to totally cut out white starches.  No more white potatoes, pasta, white rice, or white flour. 

The first two weeks after this news, I was devastated.  The medicines made me feel ill all the time and the drastic change of food intake didn’t help whatsoever.   I was on edge and cried if I went through a large puddle with my car!  Anthony was very supportive of the changes and even enjoys the new foods I’ve had to cook.  I began reading labels religiously.  I found substitutes for everything.   I figured out that if you cook brown rice or whole wheat pasta a little longer, you get the same texture as the white products.   It’s very, very hard to find items that don’t have sodium over 300mg per serving, no HFCS, and no refined sugar.   I’m learning, however, and I’m determined.  

My goal, while still to get to my goal weight, is now larger and more important.  Now I want to get off the medication and be healthy again.  

So that’s where I am now, January 2008.  I work out regularly, I go to my Weight Watchers meetings, I’m back on track and running like a little hamster on a wheel.  Let’s see where it takes me, shall we?