Back to the beginning to the Present now

Just in case you are new to my blog or because it's been a break since I consistently posted so I felt like I should have a recap of why I ever started this blog/where it is going now on my journey through life. Well above you can see is me, yes it is me, not my cousin or an altered image lol(I have had people ask me both of those things). That was me in April of 2008 at my heaviest weight of 309lbs. I was a 17 year old girl used food as her comfort and had known nothing other than being over weight since what felt like birth. I joke and tell people that I was born overweight because I was 10lbs 15oz but really I don't think that has anything to do with it lol. Growing up in an evironment where food became my comfort to stress from about age 5 and also where weight problems went back many generations and was an issue for my family, especially the women in my family. Weight has always been on my mind since Kindergarten when I can remember not wanting to wear a certain dress because a boy told me I looked pregnant in it, which typing those words still just break my heart because no five year old deserves to be body conscious but that is what happened at a young age and of course as a child you don't know what to do with that. 


As the years went by I went from chubby and overweight to by about age 15 being obese. As more stress through life occured such as losing my grandmother and then my parents going through a nasty divorce and having an emotionally unstable environment almost 24/7 food was always there to answer when I needed it's comfort most. I never realized that is what was going on until really these last two or three years, I just thought I liked to eat a lot and didn't think much as to why, partial because of my age and also just because that was always the norm. I grew up with a mother who did the same thing and so a lot of times it was just a family thing that we did and didn't question. As I approuched my high school and stuff it became very evident I was not like the other girls my age and was missing out on so much. No boy is interested in a 309lb girl, dances, dates, going out with friends even were out of the question and my self confidence was very low. I also have 7 siblings so it was much easier just to be a home body and not think anyhthing different because I knew nothing different. I knew I wanted to lose the weight but just didn't know how to stop the food or why I was using it. I would start a diet last maybe two weeks if I was really lucky but most of the time stress crept back in and then binge eating began again (but again at that time I didn't know what a binge was or that I was even using food to numb my feelings). 


Summer of 2008 as I approached my senior year I knew I wanted to make some kind of change before college and that enough was enough. I could no longer walk up stairs without being completely winded, I could barely fit in a regular sized school desk at school and was in a size 28 pants and a 3x shirt being able to only shop in Plus Size. But more than the things or this world I couldn't do I was in severe danger health wise as I was becoming pre-diabetic and also hurting my chances of fertility as my hormones were way off the charts due to my weight. Not to mention I can say some days I hated the person I was/didn't even begin to know who I was due to the weight, I was miserable trapped in a fat suit of who I could fully be. I know I am still the same girl but the real me could never come out due to the layers of fat and pain behind each one. I decided that summer I needed to change but just wasn't quite ready to fully commit for a few months. I started training with a personal trainer but just couldn't quite get the eating part down, so after about 3 months of no real progress Tricia sat me down and told me I needed to chose if I was going to 100% commit to this or she was no longer going to train me because I wasn't ready. It deff. hurt my feelings a lot at the time and I was angry but it was the best thing she could have said to me, because she challenged me to really think about it the next two months and set the fire up for what would become the first day of my new life and start of my weight loss journey on December 11, 2008. 

So that day this girl above prayed a lot, thought a lot and felt God pushing me towards taking that step into faith and doing this and this tiny, tiny, bit of hope pushed me to do it and I was off. I cannot tell you other than God's strength that helped me and motivated me because looking back I think WOW I had a lot facing me, but I can say it was the mind set of knowing it was a day by day process and it wasn't going to happen over night, and LITERALLY celebrating every day I did not cheat, or every day that I went back to the gym or every day that I chose to feel my emotions and not binge eat to numb them. There days in the beginning I thought I would die or never make it but each pound I saw slip away on the scale each week I have my wkly weigh-in's was just enough to push me that much more to my goal of 130lbs. I know you probably hear people say this but you cannot look at the numbers as a sense of how far you have to go but just the next step you need to take, ONE at a TIME. So I did that, and before I knew it a week was a month, a month was two months and by April and time for prom I was down 75lbs. 

Above I was at 231lbs and at by far one of the greatest milestones of it all, the 75lbs gone mark and also going to my senior prom, something I never dreamed I would have been able to do but I did. It would not have been possible without the help of my trainer and her friend and the suprise date they planned but it was magical, and looking back now I think man I had a long way left still, I see a girl who felt beautiful for one of the first times in her life and starting to taste a little bit of the confidence that was soon to follow. 

I then graduated in May and officially hit the 100lbs gone mark by the time I graduated on June 4th and was SO cool to walk across the stage knowing that and just feeling like a different person and that while I wasn't at goal I was going to start college off 100lbs lighter at least and knew I still had the summer to really kick things up. Which with the help of a new trainer Ryan who was in the AirForce he took me from 100lbs gone and feeling better to tone, fit and crazy haha, his workouts were intense and some days just gainsaid. He also took my body from flabby and still puffy to toned in 3 months and it blew me away. There were days he was having me flip 100lb tires outside, some days even sitting on them as I had to pull them in the hot sun. He also was the first person to get my to run on a treadmill even when I laughed at him and told them there was no way that was happening but hey he was right......it did :). 

So above is what I was by the end of Summer of 2009, down another 30lbs over those three months and by Sept. 1st was at 170lbs and down 139lbs. I started college deff. a different person and it was strange because it was so new to me but here all these new friends and people thought that this was how I always was. It was at this point I started noticing people just treating me differently getting more attention. My next biggest thing was when my local newspaper decided to right a front page article on my weight loss titles "BSU Freshmen no longer WEIGHED DOWN". That was pretty crazy seeing myself on the front page and also becoming a little bit of a local celebrity for something that to me I still couldn't believe was actually happening. A lot of people didn't know about this either because I didn't tell tons of people just because I was so scared I was going to fail at some point and it wasn't going to work. It was neat though to receive more support and also the huge support I received at the Y, it all just pushed me to lose the last 40lbs and be at my goal. 


So the months came on and the season of the hardest time in my life came into full swing. November came a loss that was very hard to bear, along with the ending of my grandfather's life as he became very ill, who had lived with us for 6 years and was truly my second father and the best Grandfather or Papou(as we say in Greek). He passed in Dec. right before Christmas which made that difficult but I was so grateful because the week before he died I was able to spend my 1 year anniversary with him of the weight loss and he told everyone he knew and the whole nursing staff on the floor he was at in the hospital and I know he was so proud and was so thankful to not have to worry about my health, so as of Dec. 11, 2009 I was at 147lbs and less than half my size.

January came and was yet again another tough year as my family went through a transition again with losing the relationship with my mom due to some legal issues. It was by far the hardest month of my life and still continues to be painful at times as we adjust but I know God is control and has been SO faithful in it all. I did hit my goal as of Feb. 26, 2010 and it was a great feeling, it would have been even better without all the stress going on around and getting there in a healthier way because at least the last 10lbs that came off were due to stress related issues and not eating right or enough. At this point my weight was getting too low, and I was working at too much and had a couple of hospital scares in the ER with potassium issues, one being so bad my heart was .2 in potassium away from stopping....talk about wake up call!

So at my smallest I arrived but deff. was far from happy. I had been there 4 months of difficulties, lost the relationship with my mom, and moved out of my house and deff. felt alone at times and sick a lot as well as I now couldn't find the balance of being smaller and knowing when to stop trying to lose weight. After all 13months of pushing, pushing, pushing I didn't know what to do when I got there, no one had really prepared me for maintenance and I deff. had not prepared myself for it at all. I think because in the back of my mind I always thought that I would fail and never make it there, I never thought to prepare for once I did and how I would handle it/stay there. To make maters worse I was finally out on my own and thrown into the world of college, boys, going out and just horrible health choices constantly, again not really prepared for that reality at all. I did stay at my goal weight for about 2 months but that was until mr. comfort food crept in and I hadn't realized I never dealt with the fact of how I will handle the emotions and not go back to old habits. 


I can truly say that I didn't think I had any kinds of eating disorder or a morphed view on food but I deff. had my whole life but didn't think about it that way. So of course as stressed poured in and new issues with being thin came in so did the food, and it was easy to think "well heck I worked this hard to get there I deserve to let loose a little bit right!?". Well problem was being deprived from things for so long and certain foods my body just freaked out when even the slightest bit of "bad food" entered. It was like I had just been on pause for 14months and body immeadiately remembered the way it was soothed by Taco Bell, and a giant bowl of ice cream, or a cheese burger. At this point as well I was not fully seeking God out and had given up a lot on my faith due to the circumstances and just felt God had left me and I didn't know where to turn so food gladly stepped in. 


So 5lbs that was seeming so easy to get off in a week, turned to a 10lb gain, then a 20lb gain and then boom staring back at me by the end of the summer of 2010 was a 50lb gain and I had NO clue how I got there, but I did know it came on twice as fast as I lost it, and I was very depressed about that. I continued to struggle and would just feel this guilt coming everywhere because I HAD been at my goal and what I said I would never do I did, I regained some and every time I would go to get rid of it the guilt of ever letting myself gain in the first place would take over and start the vicious cycle again, and I lost hope in myself, lost that faith in me that I had in thinking maybe I never deserved the weight loss? Well while those thoughts came they are not true and didn't last forever. 


This last year the stress of things slowly started to let up, my life started to find order again and the pieces while never to be the same again started to slowly fall back into place. After all that went on I will never be the same person again, but I am stronger and more the real me that ever before and took that all happening for me to do that, along with God's strength and determination to NEVER let me go, even when I wanted to let go. As of Jan. of 2011 I fully committed my life back to Christ and to putting me back together after all the change and since then and seeking after Him I have found such a better life in Him and in this new me. The one area though I had yet to surrender was my weight and self-image issues and deciding that I CAN get back to 140lbs and lose these pesky 50lbs that have been hanging around and I have been carrying around the luggage of the stress of these past few years. I realized that I do have problems with food, and allow it to be my comfort and that is where my weight problem comes from, not the food itself but the way I view it, use it and needed it rather than feeling the emotions. I am reading a book now that is awesome called "Women Food and God" and if you too feel this way I recommend it or any book like it, but truly forcing yourself to see how you view food and the ways we use it. I didn't realize as a kid I would eat a whole bag of shredded cheese after my parents got into a huge fight and I somehow felt responsible, or that when I wait up until they would go to bed and I would sneak two sandwiches and chips to go to bed full so I wouldn't be plagued of thinking of the things I could not change of the day that was stressing me out or bogging me down. 


All that to be said.....I hope you are still reading and if you are you are a champ lol :), I have decided enough is enough. I am getting back to 140lbs, I am doing it while still appreciating the 119lbs I have kept off for over 2yrs now, and for the progress so far, and for the fact that maybe in having to re lose the last 50lbs I had to discover it's not just about losing the weight and running from the food but finding out why you ever got there in the first place and how you can stay in a healthy mindset towards it. If it hadn't been for this past year and a half of being back 50lbs heavier and really thinking how did I get there but not stay there and what is happening would I have ever realized my attachment to emotional eating. I now how to view it in that light and learn that you can deff. count calories and be restrictive to get to your goal but you MUST have a plan for once your there, so as I lose this last 50lbs again I have to learn to how to have a better relationship with food and get to a goal and healthy place in a way that I can stay there for life :). All this to realize it's not a number that makes you happy, or a size of pants or even a certain look or image, but finding yourself and living a long healthy lifestyle in every choice you make :). 

So above is me now, still 119lbs lighter, happier than the girl at the beginning of this post but not at my fullest potential and ready to be the VERY best I can be at my goal set at 140lbs and ready to learn to live there and be there for the rest of my life. :) Thank you guys who read this, and for the comments and I am excited to update even more on non weight related issues tomorrow and also about this week as I hit the gym hard again and figure all this out, November 25, 2011 was officially my new start date for this 50lbs loss and I am ready more than ever to get there :D. 

~Kassandra