The Beginning

This is the first day of my new future.  Today signifies the first time I am going to actively sculpt my future and not just let it happen.  I’ve been absolutely miserable and depressed for months.  It’s a cycle that I have to break for my future, for my health, and because I deserve to be happy.

Since I was 5 I have struggled with my weight.  Really, I shouldn’t say struggled.  That’s not a big enough word to define this monster.  I should say that I have been obsessed with my weight.  Better yet, my weight has owned me and completely consumed me since I was 5.

Sarah.  When I think to myself “Who am I?” it’s like an empty white space in my mind.  Who are we in general?  What does your name mean to you?  The way we view ourselves and others is a construct created from many different variables, but for me my body image is my personal construct.  I have let my obsession with appearance and food define who I am down to my very core.  When I say “let” I mean that I realize I have always had the potential to be more than this, but my fat persona and abundance of food has been my only constant for so long, that I almost completely forgotten who I really am and what I could be.

I have been varying degrees of overweight my whole life, but to the kids in grade school, high school, and college I have always just been fat Sarah.  When I became so uncomfortable in High School that I temporarilly starved myself down to 140lbs for a few months, I was still about 10 pounds overweight compared to my peers.  While this was a point in my life where I got the most repect and interest from these peers, on the inside I might as well have been 700lbs.  I was still the same hunched over, embarrassed, quiet, ashamed person.

I’m 24 now, and I am putting my foot down.  ENOUGH!  I now realize that in order to be happy, I need to lose weight.  In order to lose weight, I need to come to terms with caring about myself, accepting myself, and most importantly – loving myself.  This is a concept that is completely foreign to me.  As of now, I am at the lowest point of my entire life.  I have panic attacks daily, I only leave the house when I absolutely have to, and most days I don’t even bother to shower.  I binge eat to a morbid point, and I now realize that it is a form of self-abuse.

I currently weight 251lbs.  Gaining nearly 30lbs. in the last month and a half alone, has pushed me to a point of sobering awareness of my potential health risks.  I am also scared for my future.  Based on my addiction to food, I realize that I could be at risk of becoming one of the many severely morbidly obese cases.  I do not want to get to the point of not being able to maintain a job or leave my house.  Even with my history of consistent and extreme weight gain, I would never have imagined I could get this big.  At 5′7″ this weight makes it hard for me to tie my shoes, walk across a parking lot, and make my way up any flight of stairs.  I sleep terribly, have trouble breathing, and am developing asthma.  Even as I sit here now, the pants that I bought 2 weeks ago (because I had gone up another size from 2 weeks prior) are making it difficult to breathe.  Another week of my eating and I would be in the next size up yet again.

I have joined Weight Watchers, and today is the first day that I am working the program.  I am making a commitment to create a better future for myself and get healthy.

I hope to use this blog to work through my emotions and inspire other people to make a change for themselves.