Thursday, July 21, 2011

A little history

Over the last 10 years my body has changed at a more or less steady rate, my weight increasing by a few pounds each year. My lifestyle and eating habits have been the major contributors to this change (which is really no surprise to anyone). When I left high school for college I weighed a mere 100 lbs, my collar bones and hips protruded my body. I was short and thin, it was cute. I rarely ate healthy foods, and often finished off a night of drinking with Dominos pizza and breadsticks. I was a picky eater so much of what was served in the cafeteria was unappealing to me, I mostly chose pasta, pizza, grilled cheese and omelets on my trips to the dining hall.

By the time I left college 4 years later I had put on the much joked about "freshman 15." I didn't like this change, I started to be more uncomfortable and less secure in my body. But looking back, if that's where I'd stayed weight-wise it would have been fine.

In the following years my eating habits didn't get much better, I spent a couple years eating a lot of frozen chicken strips, pasta, and other easy to prepare meals, generally lacking any sort of vegetable from my meals. Over the next 6 years I slowly crept up to almost 140 lbs.

It was when I moved to Cambridge (about 5 years ago) that my eating changed, in some ways for the better but overall it just assisted in my weight gain. I started to realize how much I like food and how many different foods are out there that I haven't tried and might (probably will) like. I started trying things, the more I tried the more I liked, and the more I wanted to try other things. I love food. Somewhere along the way I developed an attitude where if I wanted something or craved something I would eat it. I had zero control and didn't really want to control it. Food made me feel good, made me happy. I didn't eat obscene amounts, but I didn't eat balanced meals and my portion sizes were often dictated my restaurants (meaning my portions were far bigger than necessary). I could eat most of these portions, and pretty much always felt hungry. I wasn't happy with my body, I knew I'd become less attractive to the men I wanted to meet. But that made me angry, mostly at myself, and didn't discourage me from eating unhealthy foods/portions. I tried at various points to get my weight under control; I joined gyms and tried weight watchers and biggest loser competitions. The truth was I wasn't ready to commit, I didn't believe in these things, and so they didn't work.

So that's where I was about a year ago. Not willing to change my eating habits, and not even really knowing where to start even if I did want to.

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