Greetings, I'm Deanna. Welcome to my world.
It seems to me that I've always been overweight. I first noticed being rounder than the other kids when I was in 4th grade. Some dumb kid at school told me I looked pregnant. Another memory I have was from 6th grade, my grandma took my shopping and bought me some jeans that were a size 10. In 8th grade, my Gloria Vanderbildt jeans were a size 12 and I was 5 foot 2 inches tall. I was done growing taller. . . but obviously not wider. At the end of high school in 1990, I remember weighing about 125 and I thought I looked okay, but my butt was a bit bigger than I wished it was. Now, I would give almost anything to be there again.
When I got pregnant in December of 1990, at the age of 18 I had no clue as to how to "gracefully" gain weight while pregnant and I used pregnancy and youth as an excuse to eat anything and everything that I wanted. After all, I was eating for 2 of us! I gained at least 60 pounds. It took me almost 2 years to take it off and I did not do it very healthfully (i.e., skipping meals, replacing meals with coffee, sometimes starving myself, etc.). During those two years, I stayed home with my daughter during the day and attended a business college at night. After graduating in 1993, I started working in a law office as a legal secretary. By then, I got my weight down to around 137 pounds and thought I was pretty cute. That's when I met my husband ~ he thought I was pretty cute too. So I go from being pretty active with a little one at home to sitting all day behind a desk. Big mistake. I slowly started gaining weight. Part of it was from suddenly realizing I had an income and eating out all the time, part of it was being happy because I was dating again, and part of it was just plain ignorance.
By the time my husband and I returned from our honeymoon in 1995, I was up to 175 pounds. Uh, that was just 15 pounds away from my heaviest pregnancy weight of 190 pounds! So I tried Atkins . . . yes it was around back then too. In one week, I lost 10 pounds. Then we decided to move to another state and I eventually gained and lost a few more pounds. In 1997, my husband and I decided it was time to have a baby and with that pregnancy I did better. I only gained 35 pounds. BUTT, and that's a big but, I was heavier to begin with and still went up to 190 pounds. <Sigh.> I worked a bit harder to get the weight off by trying to eat right, but only got back down to about 164.
In the fall of 2001, I started working in a new law firm. I was the new girl and people were curious about me. I was asked not once, but twice, when I was due. <Barf!> Due? As in baby? Like, I look pregnant? At the time, that did it for me. It was February of 2002 that I decided I was going to do Weight Watchers. My initial goal was to lose 20 pounds by the time it was my husband's birthday that May. Well, I lost 26 pounds by the time his birthday rolled around. I had gone from 164 to 138. I was so proud of myself! We went back home to visit family and they couldn't believe how skinny I looked. After that, following Weight Watchers became a struggle. I did lose about 7 more pounds, but only for one day did I actually see the scale at 131 and I've not seen it since. Since then, I've completely rebelled. After returning from a trip recently, I realized my weight had skyrocketed up to 205 pounds!
So since 2002, I have been on and off program several times. Weight Watchers is a program that I know works well, and works well for me. Now that I've seen my scale top out at 205, I've decided that I don't like what I see, I don't like where I'm at, and I am again motivated not just to lose weight, but to change my habits and make a new lifestyle for myself. I know now that I'll get to my goal, I just don't know how long it will take.
