In the Beginning...

I suppose I should go back when it all started.  I was a Senior in High School, with your typical teenage body issues.  I look at pictures from then, and realize I really looked pretty good! I wasn't fat, but I must have thought I was, because my sister, Mary, and I decided to join Weight Watchers. What was I thinking, I was 18! Anyway, that was the first step of my journey. From that time on I was never satisfied with the way I looked. And there was always 'something' I needed to lose weight for...Prom, Graduation, boyfriends, college, marriage, and finally motherhood! Before I got pregnant with M'Lissa, my firstborn, I think I went on a thousand different diets. If you have ever been on this trip you know them all, too.  The Grapefruit Diet, Hard-Boiled Egg Diet, the Olympic Diet, diets from friends, diets from books, medically supervised liquid diets (that was the worst!!), I tried most all of them. Then the highlight of my life...I was pregnant! (After the first highlight of marrying my best friend, of course!)  From that time on, it was a free ticket to eat anything and everything I wanted!  I was eating for two, right?  I went on to gain more than a hundred pounds before my beautiful daughter was born! That started the spiral downward, emotionally. I suffered Postpartum depression, that went on to eventually lead to full blown chemical depression. It took a long time, and a whole other story to get all that straightened out, but eventually I was hooked up with the right meds, and was on my way to some semblance of "normal".  I did what I felt I could do to be the very best mom I could be. But being a 'fat mom' did do a number on my confidence and self-esteem.  I was still extremely obese when I became pregnant with my second daughter, Anna, but managed to only gain 18 pounds during this pregnancy. When she was born our wonderful little family was complete!  But I was most certainly not!!

...to be continued...