The subject line says it all. Looking at my ticker, it may be hard to believe, but 224 is what the scale said the first time I ever stepped on it at Weight Watchers, when I was all of fourteen years old. Granted, I was a couple of inches shorter, but that number has always stuck in my mind as something of a "goal", because for the past eleven years (nearly half my life!), life has been a series of yo-yo diets.
My first time on WW, I dropped down to about 205. Then in senior year, I skyrocketed back up to probably close to 260. In college, I fluctuated, going from 230-250. After college, I continued to fluctuate until I hit my high weight of 267, got diagnosed with PCOS, and started taking weight loss seriously. It stopped being "too hard" and I stopped finding excuses not to exercise or eat right. In the past six months, I've dropped forty-three pounds, and I can now look at the scale and see where I am going.
If I could go back in time and talk to that fourteen year old, I would have so many things to say to her. No, it is not easy. No, you can't give up every time mom or dad says something that discourages you. No, it's not fair that your friends are skinny and you're fat and you can't eat a giant slice of chocolate cake when you go out on Friday night. But knowing how I was when I was fourteen, I don't think I would have listened to myself. I had a massive persecution complex, which I think is pretty common at that age. Everything was always everyone else's fault, and I was always blameless.
Now, though, at twenty-five, I can appreciate that fourteen year old, because I think that her failures, and my subsequent yo-yo dieting ever since, have all taught me something. Those lessons, combined with a medical scare and a good therapist, have allowed me to be really and truly successful this time around. Taking weight off the right way, and taking it one day at a time.
So thanks, fourteen-year-old me. And stop wearing so much eyeliner - you look like a raccoon!
