My Long Story
I started struggling with my weight after high school. In college I ate a lot of junk, didn't exercise, and ballooned up. By age 20 I weighed about 150lbs. (I am only 5'3"
) Something happened as I approached my 21st birthday, however. The weight started to melt off. I was down about 10 lbs when I decided to help it along by counting calories. I ate a strict 1200 calories a day and in three months I was down to 110 lbs.
I wanted to be thinner. I began cutting my calories further. Soon I was existing on 500 calories a day. I dieted my way down to 80lbs and got very sick the summer I turned 22. I won't go into details about my illness except that it was horrible and made me realize that I wanted to be healthy and strong, not just thin.
It was at this point that I discovered the joys of exercise. I read every exercise book I could and created my own program. I ended up at a slim 130 lbs, a weight I discovered my body was very happy at. I found that I could maintain that weight of 130 lbs with minimal effort. I exercised every other day on a Stair Master and worked out with free weights on the other days. I was toned and strong.
I maintained myself at 130 lbs until I began working full time after college. The weight gain was slow and insidious; the scale inched up in increments of two or three pounds, and I would delude myself into thinking "oh, its only three pounds. I'll exercise more next week and those pounds will be gone."
Except I never did exercise more. It was easier to sit in front of the computer or the TV after my long commute than to exercise. Couple the fact that every Friday some kindly coworker would bring donuts or bagels to work, and the fact that I was just generally not watching how many calories I ate, all took its toll. I gained fifteen pounds in about a year.
I managed to keep my weight at no more than 145lbs by off and on exercising. As the years passed by my exercise attempts were more "off" than "on" and from 2000 to 2001 I put on another five pounds. Every day I would say "I'll start a diet and get back to exercising tomorrow and the pounds will come off." I was in denial about being overweight and refused to face the fact that I had regained much of the weight that I had lost years before.
I got married in November 2001 and on my wedding day I tipped the scales at 154lbs. I was still fooling myself that I was ok with my weight. Even my wedding photos, in which I looked terrible, didn't affect me enough to make me take action. I then made the mistake a lot of new brides make: I started eating like my husband ate. He's three inches taller and has a runner's lean build. He can eat junk food all day and not gain a pound.
We shared bags of chips, containers of ice cream, and bags of candy, washed down with plenty of pop. Six months later the scale read 174 lbs.
174 lbs was sort of a wake up call for me. I managed, through some small combination of diet and exercise to get back down to 154 lbs. This started a three year yo-yo cycle of me getting disgusted with my weight, dieting down to 154lbs, being so happy to get there, and then gaining 10-11lbs back. My average weight during this period was around 160-161lbs.
It was not until we visited this small resort in Palm Springs last July that I finally decided that I'd had enough of being fat, and that I was finally going to
seriously do something about it. We had gone out to dinner one night with the rest of the guests and the owners. There were a total of eight couples, and I was easily the heaviest woman there. All the other women were thin and were wearing cute outfits and I just looked frumpy. I felt so horrible about myself and absolutely disgusted with the woman I saw in the mirror. I didn't even look like myself anymore.
About six months earlier, we had purchased an elliptical machine and a recumbent bike. When we came home from Palm Springs, I began using them. I started out doing five minutes on each one. I worked my way up to 45 minutes on each machine. I started strictly counting my calories again, since that was what had worked for me sixteen years ago. This time, however, I was more sensible about it and by eating no more than 1500 calories a day, I lost over 30 lbs, going from 162-164 lbs to 130 lbs in eight months.
I have since incorporated back in a strength training program that is a mixture of pilates and ballet. I currently do aerobic exercise five days a week, for an hour a day, 30 minutes on each machine, and do my strength training program three days a week, for an additional hour. I eat anywhere from 1800-2100 calories per day and have been maintaining my weight at 129-130 lbs since February of 2006.
I would say that the lesson I learned is that both daily exercise and healthy eating are the keys to weight control. If you neglect either one, the weight will return. I hope I never forget that lesson because I love being a fit and healthy person. I never ever want to go back to being fat and out of shape.
Thanks for letting me share my story.
~Silvervixen
Here Goes :Deep Breath:
You definitely should not feel "frumpy" any more! 
