Health Autobiography

To get where I want to go, first I have to know where I've been...

I first gained weight in the fourth grade (a stressful year for me) and, with the help of my mother, went on my first diet in the fifth grade.  It was a healthy diet produced by our local hospital’s education program and it resulted in some positive changes for our whole family, yet what I remember most about it is the feeling that some foods were forbidden and therefore exciting.  Throughout adolescence, I bumped up against the edge of being chubby and daydreamed a lot about being thinner, but I was able to swap clothes with my friends and felt pretty when I dressed up, so it wasn’t a huge issue.  Jaw surgery at age fifteen gave me a taste of what it was like to be on the lower end of the healthy weight range for my size, but once the wiring came off my teeth, I slowly rose back to my old weight. 

In college, living away from home for the first time, I did gain the Freshman Fifteen, but lost it soon after through exercise and re-learning how to diet.  That was both good and bad.  I went through phases at a lower weight accomplished partially by exercise, yet I also went through weeks of staving off hunger with pickles, air popped popcorn, diet shakes, and no-calorie soda.  I began thinking too much about what I should and shouldn’t eat, creating a larger pattern of virtuous hunger and relieved overeating.

Throughout my college years, my father battled cancer.  My “thick” times pretty much coincided with each time the cancer we hoped was beaten surprised us by coming back yet again.  When the stress eased up, I’d lose weight again.  After four years of this, Dad died at home under hospice care with my mother and I taking care of him.  My weight zoomed up during that time, but I quickly lost it again by exercise and dieting a few months later.  Soon, however, my mother also got sick and died under hospice care.  This time I was so shell shocked from two parents dying in two years that my weight just kept climbing.  It is strange to say, but I hardly noticed it was happening.  By the time I had the courage to step on a scale a couple of years later, I was in the lower regions of obese.  (Sigh.  Such a painful word to even write.) 

After a pause of three years, I began to turn things around.  I lost thirty pounds.  Following a move to Tennessee for graduate school, I then lost thirty more.  The exciting thing was that I exercised but also ate well to accomplish this.  It involved no weigh-ins, group meetings, formal diet plans, or food journals.  Also, I maintained the loss fairly well for almost half a decade.  Many of the healthy habits I developed stuck with me even longer.  (In fact, without them I think I’d be an awful lot bigger right now!)

Little by little, however, some of the weight crept back – vacations, holidays, periods of stress.  I started dieting to get the weight off again, wanting it to be gone quickly.  Each time I moved jobs/homes (four times), my healthiest days seemed that much more far away.  I slowly slid into a decade of yo-yoing – never near that top weight again but not very close to the bottom either.  Then came a happy but definitely stressful year-long mix of engagement, wedding, sale of my home, career change and first book deal, move to a small town, husband’s deployment, pregnancy, cross-country move, book deadline, and childbirth.  Whew!  Ever heard of the “exploding bride syndrome,” women relieved to have true love and glad to be done with skimping to fit into a wedding dress?  That was me.  I definitely found it hard when my new husband deployed the month after the wedding.  I rattled around for those months trying to settle into a place where I didn’t know anyone, that had a lot fewer resources than any place I’d ever lived, and that wasn’t going to even be home for more than a few months.  I kept busy all day, yet the evenings seemed awfully long as I tried not to wander through the kitchen yet again just to have something to do.  A lot of my clothes were already tighter when he returned and then I immediately got pregnant. 

Thankfully, I ate quite well when pregnant – no fast food, no artificial anything, avoided all the pregnancy no-no foods.  My doctor was pleased with my weight gain and I actually gained less than average.  But once my manuscript was at the press and my son finally arrived, I stopped even thinking about what I ate.  I assumed I’d just naturally lose the extra pounds.  I wasn’t sitting around eating tubs of ice cream, so how bad could it be?  But the breastfeeding hormones made me ravenous even though I was producing very little milk.  I was exhausted all the time and, because my husband worked all day and needed to be rested for that, I spent all but my evenings alone with my newborn.  When I stepped on the scale about four months later, I was stunned to realize I’d rocketed up.  In fact, I went right back up to the highest weight I’d been after my parents died.  I immediately started eating better and talking my son on walks, which dropped about fifteen pounds.  Then my weight stabilized.  In the last couple of years, I’ve yo-yoed a little, but not much.  I’ve courted Weight Watchers online a time or two.  Twice I ate low-carb for about six weeks and lost about ten pounds, but it immediately returned when I got off the diet.

Now my son is on the downward slope of age two and I find not just myself, but our whole family nearing a crossroads.  Three-morning-a-week preschool starts for my son in a couple of weeks, which suddenly gives me more time to myself again but also begins an era where my child will have more and more influence from the outside world.  My little guy is starting to be more aware of foods and definitely notices the difference between birthday cake and carrots.  He’s also not one of those hyper string bean kids, so I’m ever-aware that we have to teach him not to be a couch potato.  As he grows, I’m feeling increasingly more pressure to be a good example for him.  A year from now we’re moving back home to Georgia and I realize part of me feels conflicted because I don’t feel my external self reflects who I really am and I’ll be running into a lot of people who used to know me when I was thinner.  My military husband will soon retire and be free from the annual physical fitness tests that have encouraged him to keep his weight low; as the cook of the family, I’m feeling an increasing responsibility for what appears on the table, what foods are available for snacking, and how often we eat out. 

I’m ready to have my healthy life back.  I’ve tasted how good it can be and I know it is worth the changes and sacrifices.  It will mean building up the muscle mass I’ve lost over the years to yo-yo diets.  It will mean getting organized so eating well and exercising isn’t any more complicated than it has to be.  It will mean sorting out what works and doesn’t work for me and my family so I’m not spinning my wheels mindlessly following advice.  And it will be learning to be mindful, being aware of my own patterns, respecting the mind/body connection, and striving for a livable state of balance.

What about you?  What has your health journey been like thus far?