(3) My Story

My weight issues began at age 13. I never felt attractive enough and constantly compared myself to other girls'. In my 10th grade foods class the teacher showed a movie about a girl who was anorexic. I think it was meant to scare us but it had the opposite effect on me. It intrigued me. I filed it away in my mind as "the" way to lose weight. I stayed in fairly decent shape through high school due to sports and working on my dads farm.
The summer after graduation I thought I needed to be skinnier so I began my first diet of "eat the least amount possible". I quickly lost weight and people started noticing. Compliments on how good I looked made me wonder "Did I look that bad before?". I loved the attention I was getting which made me want to lose even more weight.
When I got to college, starving became a full blown obsession. I found that if I tried eating more I'd immediately start gaining weight. This terrified me. I felt I had to starve to stay skinny. I remember one morning lying on the living room couch in the dark pretending to be asleep as I watched my naturally thin roommate eat a bowl of Lucky Charms. I was so envious of her, wondering how she could eat at all and be as skinny as she was. That day I ate 1/2 a blueberry bagel w/ a bit of strawberry cream cheese and I cried myself to sleep that night because my body hurt so bad. To this day my favorite breakfast cereal is Lucky Charms.
I continued starving until I met my husband when somehow I lost the desire to do that to myself anymore. I did gain weight but after allowing myself to finally eat again I couldn't find the will power to go back to starving. I'd try every now and then but couldn't stick with it.
As you can see in my pics, I gained weight with each pregnancy. After the twins', I yo-yo dieted for 5 years until I experienced my "defining moment".
My baby was in the NICU and I was staying at the Ronald McDonald House one block away. I'll never forget trying to cross the street to get to the hospital. I was moving as fast as I could but after three months of bed rest my muscles wouldn't work right. I was out of breath and there were cars that had to stop and wait for me. One driver smiled at me but I felt so ashamed and embarrassed, I started sobbing right there in the middle of the street. All I wanted was to get to my baby but I could barely move. At that moment I realized that I'd been taking my life and the ability to move my body for granted. I'd spent years making excuses as to why I couldn't get myself into shape when there are people, like a cousin of mine, who was paralyzed in a car accident. I'm sure he'd give anything for the ability to get up out of his wheelchair and just move. I promised myself I'd never not move my body again.
I'd known about 0-5 eating since college. An eating disorder counselor had given me a book about it but I'd dismissed it as a too easy, too good to be true gimmick. Now I was desperate. Starving was not an option. I had a brand new baby and I was homeschooling the twins'. Body For Life, the intense diet/exercise program I'd done before to lose weight, was too overwhelming. I decided to try 0-5 eating. Imagine my amazement when the weight just started falling off steadily. I was eating anything I wanted and losing weight. I'd finally found my answer to the mystery of weight loss.