October 24, 2007
Let’s see, where were we….
Oh yeah, I was in high school living a pleasantly plump, quite happy existence as a star athlete. Like I said before, in high school losing weight really wasn’t a huge issue for me because I was satisfied with what my body could do, rather than judging it based on appearance.
I got to college and everything changed.
I attended the University of Tampa. If anyone has ever been to Tampa you’ll know there are basically two demographics that live there. One half of the population is composed of people over 190 years old who have sunbathed so much during their years of living in the Sunshine State that their wrinkles are at least 3 inches deep. The other half of the population is made up of college students/really, young rich families mostly coming from up North who were so repressed from years of winter coats, hats and boots, that they now want to show off as much skin as possible and therefore work out incessantly in order to have the body to show off. I was SHOCKED by how attractive everybody at my college was when I first got there. Maybe the reason I was never unhappy with my weight in high school was because I hadn’t realized girls could have six packs abs. No self respecting female at my high school ever walked around in low rider jeans and a shirt so small/tight it looked like my sports bra. Girls at UT went to their 8am classes like that. At first I really wasn’t bothered by the fact that my body looked nothing like that. In fact, my first year was spent lounging in the cafeteria (which has delicious food, btw) eating massive amounts of french fries and ice cream. I was also introduced to the wonders of alcohol and partying. Shots of tequila and nights spent playing cards (aka drinking games) were not doing wonders for my physique. I was no longer physically active so I went from working out pretty much every day of the year in high school to doing absolutely nothing in college. Unless you count walking around campus, drunkenly pulling the safety alarms and then running away from Security as exercise. Fun? YES. Healthy? Not so much.
To add to my growing weighty concerns, I started working as a waitress at an Italian restaurant that year. We got a free meal for every double shift we worked and I usually worked 4-5 doubles a week (yeah, I worked and partied MUCH more than I went to class. I actually would schedule myself at work during times I knew I had class just because it was so unnecessary to actually be there for the lectures). So I was eating HUGE plates of pasta, sipping on Coke (regular, GASP) out of the little cone cups at the beverage station on my downtime (and since the restaurant was well on it’s way to being out of business by the time I started there, we had a lot of those moments) and drinking really low-cal drinks every night like chocolate martini’s.
All the muscle I ever had turned to a blobby mass. I was really upset about how I looked and felt. I was tired all the time, and unable to do things I could do before. Like a simple backhandspring, for instance. I used to be able to do up to 20 in a row, I could traverse the length of the football field flipping. I tried to do one out in the common area in front of my dorm one night thinking it would be a piece of cake like always. My arms gave out and I fell on my head. Granted, I was drunk, so that probably wasn’t the best measure of success (note to self: although drunken gymnastics always sounds like such a fantastic idea it never ends pretty). I was horrified at what my body could no longer do. I used to be able to do backhandsprings even when I was too sick to walk (momentum people, it works wonders).
At my largest I’m sure I weighed more than 180 but I never got on the scale to find out. All I know is that my size 16 jeans were a too small. WAY too small. I didn’t buy new ones, I just wore sweatpants constantly and convinced myself it was the college style.
I decided I needed to lose weight. But, I had no idea how. Exercise was something I had always done with the end goal of winning. Individual sports were totally foreign to me, as was the concept of working out just to get yourself healthy or thinner, not because you were at practice with your teammates. And don’t even get me started on diet. I mean, bagels as big as my head are really healthy right? I was clueless.
The first thing I did was switch from regular Coke to Diet Coke. I lost 10 pounds instantly and I could fit back into my size 16′s. People started noticing the loss (although that might have more to do with the fact that I started dressing in real clothes again, rather than constant oversized hoodies and sweatpants). I felt good about my “diet,” and wanted to continue. I just wasn’t quite sure about the next step. Fortunately, I had just changed my major from International Business to Sports Management (GENIUS decision, btw, because there’s a huge market for people like me in a country where girls don’t play sports and even on men’s sports teams they’re too corrupt/macho/or totally lacking in funds and infrastructure to hire people who know what they’re doing). I signed up for fall classes and one of my requisites for Sports Management was a Biokinetics and Conditioning. I had NO clue what that meant but a friend told me that it was like field day back in elementary school, you got to go to class in workout clothes and compete with the other kids. The only thing missing was a blue ribbon for the winners. Well, she obviously had a different teacher than I got because my Biokinetics and Conditioning class was NOTHING like the gloriousness that was field day.
On the first day of class we had our fat measured with pinchers. In front of everybody. At UT most kids who are Sports Management majors also play on the school’s athletic teams (UT is a very competitive DII school). So in a class with boys who had 7% body fat and girls with 14% my 34% really stood out. We were told that almost our entire grade would be based upon creating a fitness plan based on the things we learned along the way in class, and proving that it worked by following our own fitness plan and measuring our results at the end of the semester. The next class was a two mile run, and we were told we would be doing the same at the end of the semester as well, to show our progress. I didn’t come in last. I beat a group of chain smokers who were also anorexically thin. How’s that for a win?!?
I finally realized that I really and truly was not even close to being able to call myself athletic anymore.
To be continued…
October 22, 2007
Squeaking past Seriously, How Am I Still Alive?: Random (sometimes dangerous) adventure I’ve had in Chile by 18 votes to 17, I present to you Not Chubby Anymore: How I got off my butt and lost 50 pounds.
I have a feeling this is going to be part I. Something tells me the whole story won’t fit into just one post.
To understand how someone loses weight, it’s helpful to know how he or she gained it in the first place. So let me take you back…way back. From birth I was chubby, and only liked unhealthy foods. I have vague memories of consuming whole sticks of butter with my brother, as well as chowing down on raw sugar by the cup full. Here I am at the tender age of 2 …already drowning my sorrows in mint chocolate chip ice cream…”Why me? Why me? One day I was all alone enjoying my mommy’s love all to myself, and the next thing I know, I have to share her lap with that squirmy little thing that never stops crying. WAAAAAH, LIFE IS HARD, I NEED ICE CREAM!”
It didn’t help that I was oddly proportioned. My legs were so short that my step dad once saw a picture of me when I was little and called me a butt with feet!
My earliest memory of thinking about weight related issues, was in 5th or 6th grade when all my friends were starting to reach the 100lb mark. It was a big deal. Every week a new friend would come to school screaming, “OMG, I get to start shopping in the juniors section, today I weighed 102lbs!” Hitting the triple digits was like a sign we were growing up. Only problem was, I think I reached that mark in like 4th grade. By the time they were all hitting the mark, I couldn’t remember the last time I had weighed that much. It was embarrassing. That was the first time I really thought about that fact that I was bigger than other little girls.
When I got into 7th grade I tried out for the cheerleading team. Out of more than 300 little girls who tried out, I got one of 40 coveted spots. I was ecstatic! We soon started practicing and our coaches began teaching us the basics of stunting (cheerleaders tossing other girls around up in the air for those of you who aren’t cheer lingo knowledgeable). The general principle was that in our big competition of the year every girl would be featured in at least one stunt. So we all would have our chance to shine as the flyer (the girl who’s getting bounced around like popcorn kernel in the microwave). I think the assumption was that at that age, we were all relatively the same size so we could all work in any stunt position, be it in the air or on the ground. I was so ashamed that when it was my turn to go up, the group could only manage a simple V-sit, the easiest of all stunts. I was too heavy to perform anything else. But, I was still a great cheerleader. My tumbling (gymnastics) was far more advanced than most of the girls, my jumps were powerful and I was good at stunting as a base (the girls who do the heavy lifting). I was strong and compact and that is how I’ve been described for most of my life.
In middle school I was anything but popular. I wasn’t unpopular. I was just…nothing. Nobody noticed me. There were boys that liked me, but they weren’t the ones that I liked. I had friends, but I wanted to be part of the cool kids group. It didn’t take me long to realize that beauty and being thin meant power, even at that young age. The girls in school who were the teacher’s favorites, who were chosen to represent the school for the Got Milk campaign, who the boys liked…they were slender. They bought their clothes from 5 7 9. I could never fit into anything at that damn store! They had highlights and wore designer jeans, neither of which I could afford. And the truth is that I longed to be smaller but I didn’t have the foggiest how one goes about losing weight.
The food I ate at home was the root of the problem. Mom, I’m not blaming you! I know you did the best you could. My mom worked full time and overtime hours to make ends meet as a single mom. She was also going back to school to get her Masters. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of spare time on the agenda to make a home cooked meal. She would get home from class at 9:30pm and we’d call her begging to bring home McDonald’s or order us a pizza. We were so addicted to fast food, in fact, that once we actually went around to multiple places to gather together the best of the best. The world’s best fast food meal…curly fries from Arby’s, Shamrock shake from McDonald’s, hamburger from Burger King. Is it sad that I still remember that? My mom and my brother both ate that crap too, but those lucky dogs never gained, or if they did, didn’t gain much. I was the only one in the family who really struggled with my weight.
I continued gaining and by the time I was in 9th grade I wore a size 10 pants. But I remained highly involved in athletics. I was a very fit chubby girl, if that makes any sense. I tried out for the freshman cheer team and made the JV team. At my school cheerleading was extremely competitive. We did hardcore gymnastics and stunting, no dancing. Our practices shared a fitness coach with the football coach. And our varsity team ranked 1st or 2nd in the state every year. Cheerleading was 7-8 months out of the year, with 4 hour long practices every day of the week during competitive season. And on the off season, I played soccer, which I was also good at. I played varsity for 4 years, was captain for my last two years and MVP my senior year (yes, I’m bragging, but I’m proud of the fact that I was a great athlete).
I think that’s why my doctor never said anything to me. I only remember him showing me that my weight fell well outside the normal category on the growth chart. And whenever weight or size came up in the conversation, the only comments made to me by friends and family were things like, “You’re all muscle.” or, “You’re big boned.” I was a size 14, sometimes 16 by the time I graduated. But, I still really wasn’t concerned enough about my weight to actually do something about it. I think since my body could outperform a lot of skinny people’s bodies when it came to athletic performance I just wasn’t too worried about health. If I really wanted to lose weight I suppose I wouldn’t have come home from every soccer practice and eaten fast food. If I didn’t eat fast food, I cooked the only thing I knew how, noodles. Either plain egg noodles with butter and lots of salt, or ramon noodles. Oh, and I also used to mix chocolate chips and peanut butter, melt it in the microwave and eat it just like that. Pure heaven. I would still eat that if I got the chance, but I now hate plain noodles, and fast food.
Good thing I never had low self esteem. I look back at my senior pictures and wonder how I let myself get like that. But at the time, I thought they turned out great. I definitely thought I was hot stuff!
By the time I graduated high school I weighed about 180lbs at 5’2″. And things would only get worse in college…
To be continued tomorrow.
October 18, 2007
Ok, so the truth is these SP’s aren’t so pretty or witty and bright. Forgive me, I got a little sick of my face, so it’s all about fingers and toes for the last couple of days.
Day 41: I got published in a UK magazine. But, I’m not very happy about it. First off, when they originally contacted me, they said they were going to pay. Then, after I sent them all my images they told me that they were no longer going to be able to. Then, on top of all that, the image they printed came out really yellow. My print version of it, printed with a professional printing company, looks nothing like that…it looks a thousand times better. To see the image they used in the magazine, click here. Oh yeah, and this has nothing to do with the photography contest that I asked you guys to vote in a while back. I still won’t find out about that for a couple more weeks I think.
Day 42: My footsie with my favorite jogging/walking shoes. Hopefully they will be key in my weight loss for bikini season.
Day 43: Student loan repayment is getting me down. My advice to all, run, not walk, to the cheapest community college you can find. Later on down the road, you’ll be laughing when the rest of your big school friends are crying.
Day 44: Our system. We have a spare bedroom in which we keep all our clothes. Clean goes on the bed, dirty on the floor. Don’t ever call me unorganized.
One last thing, I’ll start writing on whatever wins the poll tomorrow!
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