saying goodbye to my inner 'fat girl'

A long time ago, I was a young girl who was overweight.  Well, I guess you could say I was the 'fat girl.'  Other kids, especially girls, were cruel... and I still remember what it was like to be singled out and teased.  I wanted to change, but I didn't exactly know how, nor did I ever have the real commitment I would need to see it through.  I remember one school year, telling the other girls before summer vacation that I was going to lose weight that summer.  Under the leadership of one particularly mean girl, all the girls laughed at me, saying I would never do that.

I tried to keep my weight under control during high school, but always felt that I was still that 'fat girl' compared to the other girls, who seemed to be thin so easily.  My senior year we had a career fair the same day that I happened to have a check up scheduled at my doctor's office.  I still remember how, when I mentioned the career fair, the nurse told me I could be a model if I would only lose weight.  (Don't all fat girls at one time or another recieve a similar comment?   It's meant to seem like a compliment... something about what a pretty face you have, but what they are really saying is you are fat.)

I went off to college a heavy girl, and my weight did not improve in that setting.  My first year I was extremely unhappy and lonely.  I didn't eat in the cafeteria since that would mean being alone in a crowd full of people.  So I stayed in my room and made (unhealthy) food in the microwave.  I was still alone, but at least I wasn't alone with people looking.  That's what I told myself.  That year I was also involved in a very unhealthy relationship with a young man who constantly put me down.  I still remember the day I had started exercising with another girl on my floor, and this boyfriend questioned why she was exercising since she was not the one who needed it.  That was the last day I exercised with her... I just gave up. 

I transferred to a new college (and ended that relationship) at the end of my freshman year.  I never did get my weight issues corrected during college, and by the time I graduated,  was shopping exclusively in plus-sizes.  Where I used to be able to squeeze into a size 14, I was now wearing at least a 16 or 18. 

I had fallen in love with a young man (my now husband) who never even seemed to notice, let alone care, that I had a weight problem.  We got married the summer after graduating from college.  My wedding gown was a size 22, and even that had to be further altered so it would fit.  I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, but, to this day, it bothers me to have been that large on that happy day.

After our wedding, my weight continued to climb, and I also had been diagnosed with a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).  Women with PCOS often have extreme weight problems, and it can be very difficult to lose weight with PCOS.  PCOS can also cause infertility, which it did for me, but that is another part of my story to be told another time...

By the time I became pregnant with my son, Geoffrey, I was already 200 pounds, and by the end of my pregnancy I had exceeded 250 pounds.  The whole first year after he was born, I think I still stayed in the 230s.  I was also struggling at the time with an unknown condition... I was in constant pain and suffered with extreme levels of exhaustion.  As it turns out, I had something called fibromyalgia.  And, in my opinion, that is probably what saved my life.

See... having that diagnosis changed me.  And I don't mean just a little, or for a while.  My health finally became important to me when I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia 10 years ago.  I certainly didn't enjoy feeling "sick" and "tired" all the time (I now knew what people meant when they would say "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.")  I started trying to learn what I could do to help my fibromyalgia improve.  Know what I came across time and time again?  ... Exercise!

So, I started to exercise, slowly, and just a little, but over time weight started to come off.  I talked about some of the details of my weight loss journey in a previous post.  Ten years after being diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I now weigh one hundred pounds less than I did at my heaviest.  I have also changed in many ways that are not measurable on a bathroom scale.  I am a healthy, active, confident and connected woman who also happens to be an athlete.  Never could I have imagined, back during those 'fat' days, ever reaching a point where I could define myself in those ways. 

I also never could have imagined reaching this point in my journey... the next step!  I have recently become certified to teach indoor cycling, and have been hired at the Y to teach my own class!  Indoor cycling, or spinning as it is called, is something that initially intimidated me when I would be doing my workout at the Y.  I would see that spinning class going on, and I would think to myself, "I could never do that!"  It just looked too hard.  For months, I convinced myself that I couldn't do it, so I never even tried.  Last spring, though, I just decided that because it intimidated me, that it was something I needed to try.  And so I did, and I found that, not only could I do it, but I actually could do it well (over time) and I really enjoyed it.

That inner 'fat girl' in me still cannot believe sometimes how much I have changed!  But she is slowly catching on.  See, it takes the mind a little longer than the body sometimes to 'catch up' with the changes.  Like when I go shopping and still reach for a size 10, instead of the 8 or 6 (yes, 6!) that I actually can wear now!  Or when I see a photo that was taken of me, and find that I am surpised to see that I look thin (my mind still expects a chubbier version of my current self).  But, mostly, what I want is to say goodbye to that inner 'fat girl,' because I know I do not need her any longer.  She is holding on to too many hurts of the past, and those are things that I can never go back and undo for her.  It's like the quote I included at the top of this post ~ I can't go back and make a new beginning, but I can make a new ending.  So to that little girl who couldn't play teeter-totter without suffering embarrassment, to the middle schooler who was  teased and made to feel unworthy, to the high schooler who never felt good enough or thin enough, to the young college woman who never learned how to take care of herself, and to the adult former me (the one who carried those 100 extra, unnecessary, burdensome pounds)... it is new ending time!  While my past was defined by limitations, my future is defined by unlimited potential!  And this time, I will not be the one who puts limits on where I might go, or what I might do next. 

Goodbye 'fat girl!'

2001



2012



Hello new ending!