I truly have struggled with my weight my ENTIRE life! In high school I was overweight and guys did not want to date the overweight girl. I continued to be called names and with the introduction of Sea World, I began being called Shamu. I will never forgot walking through the crowded halls during one of my high school years to have some guy yell out to everyone, "Move out of the way! Here comes SHAMU!" Everyone laughed, but inside I died a little bit more that day...
I hated how I looked and I hated how I felt...and the only thing I did was eat more food to "comfort" myself. I was sabatoging myself, without even knowing it! And I was allowing myself to be "taught" by everyone else - magazines, movies, friends, classmates, that what was on the outside was more important and valuable than what was on the inside. And that is how my self-hatred began...
After my junior year in high school I lost about 60 pounds. I showed up to school with my new body, but I was still the same person inside, a girl who wanted so badly to be accepted for how she looked, not who she was. The diet I went on to get my new body was crazy! I could only eat 800 calories a day. I measured out all of my food. I would go to bed hungry, but I was getting skinny and that's all that mattered to me. The down side of that is that I became so obsessed with being thin that I found myself only eating a packet of peanut butter crackers and a Hawaiian Punch, once a day. But hey, I was skinny...
It is amazing what lengths we will go to, to achieve that "look" that we want. The only problem was that the way I felt about myself didn't change, even though my body did...so, it didn't matter whether I was overweight or skinny, my mind still responded to things in the exact same way. I didn't know how to deal with either side of the coin...and my confusion with diet vs. lifestyle change would take a long time to finally get...over the next several years of my life I gained 170+ pounds and a whole lot of shame and guilt...
I know what you mean, it is so hard to be the "fat girl" in school. I was not even that overweight at first but I was ostracized and that just made things worse. I also did some very unhealthy things to get skinny and it took me getting pregnant to finally take my health seriously, if only for the baby at first. Now I am doing this for me and I am making sure to take my health seriously. It is amazing how much better you feel when you fuel your body properly.
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