Slinkygirl_76's WW Page

Let's see, where to begin? Well, my name is Carissa but I usually go by Rissa. I was born June 19, 1976, originally from Burbank, California but have recently transplanted to Port Orchard, Washington with my husband and I've been on and off with WW since January 2001. I have pretty much been...shall we say..more than average size most of my life. In grade school I didn't give it much thought, but in jr. high I thought I was HUGE! In reality I was just average but you know teenagers...everything is larger than life.  Looking back, I can pretty much figure that's where it all started. By then I'd already tried WW, Nutri System and Jenny Craig and a bunch of other fad diets with my mom, all with little to no results. Eventually it became a self-fulfilling prophecy because in high school I really did start getting bigger. I wasn't obese (yet) but I was definitely beginning some terrible habits, to say the least. Of course the weight just kept creeping on over the years and fast forward to January 2001, it hits me. I have "that moment". I see a picture of me with a friend from the Christmas that's just passed...and it's my fat friend. You know..the one everyone has that's always been bigger than you and all your other friends, and you secretly say that you hope you never get that big and wonder why she doesn't at least try to lose the weight? Well...I'd gotten that big. I was now the fat friend. The picture of us side-by-side was the proof and it nearly floored me. I'd been toying with the idea of joining WW and trying the points thing for a couple weeks already but that did it. The next day I went to work, talked to my friend & coworker about it and we decided to try it together and went to a meeting the next week. I joined January 18th, 2001  and weighed in at 277.8 (on a 5'7 frame) . I've been working at it ever since.

The first year and a half was the best. I was so committed to doing it by any means necessary that making the necessary changes wasn't as hard as I'd anticipated, especially since eating veggies and drinking lots of water were something I'd always done...I'd just added lots of bad things on top of that! Talk about motivation and results, I lost 13 pounds my very first week!!! People started noticing the weight loss at somewhere around 40-50 pounds...that's when you could really see it. Of course the results motivate you to keep going, and that I did. I lost a total of 103 pounds in about 18 months or so. I was actually thinner than I was in high school! I was 4 pounds away from being what my driver's license said I was (which was a lie to start out with!) and I felt better about myself than I ever had my entire life. I had self-esteem and self-respect up the wazoo, plus a whole lotta confidence to boot! I was trying new things, meeting new people, and get this - I could fit into clothes at the trendy stores!! I went from a size 26 to a 14 and I couldn't have been happier. It was a whole new Rissa and I liked her whole hell of a lot better than the old one, let me tell you! Things were looking better every day. I'd even met a guy... 

I met my my husband Brad when I was almost at my thinnest and most confident. Things were going wonderfully and I continued to lose. After a while we moved in together and that marked the beginning of the end of my weight loss. I'd lived alone up until that point and I had total control over what foods were in my kitchen. If it was a red light food, it didn't even make it into my shopping cart, let alone the cabinets. Pizza? Fast Food? No way! After changing my mindset and working at it for so long I'd started to look at food in a different way and got to the point where instead of seeing a slice of yummy pepperoni pizza I saw a greasy calorie-and-fat-ridden glob that was totally unappealing to me. Then....enter Cupid...that little bugger! I found myself saying things like "It's ok honey, if you want pizza we'll have pizza", "I'll have whatever you're having", and "Want some dessert?". It's like his stupid little arrow drained me of all my motivation to stay on program and in it's place came "I'm in love and nothing else matters". I lost all sense of reason, threw caution to the wind and jumped in with both feet. After that came what we lovingly call the "summer of pizza" where his little brother came to spend the summer with us and that's all we ate, and by then all bets were off. I'm sure you can see where this is heading. After about a year of living together I'd gotten back up to about 200 pounds - a weight I vowed I'd never be again, yet here I was. I'd go back to WW for a few weeks at a time, but something always came up that made me stop. Money issues, time issues, laziness issues. The point is that I've now gained about 60 pounds of the 103 I'd originally lost back and I'm HATING IT! I've re-started and stopped WW more times than I can count, each time telling myself that this was it, the last time, and before I knew it I was quitting again. I don't know what makes me keep quitting but I know what makes me keep going back. It's the only thing that's EVER worked for me and I believe that I can do it...if it takes me a hundred tries I'm going to get to goal! Like my first (and favorite) WW leader says, "The time is going to pass anyways, it's up to you what to do with it". 

So, wanna know how I'm doing now? Have I lost any of the weight I gained back? Am I at goal yet? Did I stop again and gain any more back? What's going on??? Well check out my Blog! Blog! Blog! page, I'll tell ya there and if you're lucky I'll even throw in a picture or two!