Applebuddy
 

Hi there-

My name is Raquel. I am a married 37 year old mother of one wonderful son. Having been overweight for the last 8 years has been extremely difficult on not only my well-being, but, it has also been difficult on my family. For the last 4 years I have been working towards weight-loss. Currently I am at 189 pounds. I have been slowly losing (which is not a bad thing) and have reached over 100 pounds in loss to date. It has been a stop and go 20 pound loss at a time. I suppose I could say I had a hard struggle to get where I am, but, if you are reading this then you already know what I am talking about.

Nothing traumatic happened in my earlier years to excuse the amount of weight that I had added. No one died. Nobody hurt my feelings. No deep-rooted depression came about to let me overeat. All that happened was life. I lived it to the fullest. I enjoyed good times good friends, and especially the good food that goes hand in hand with the good times and good friends. Time goes by and I remember enjoying myself and partying it up at my extended in-laws (hubby's uncle) home. We were all looking through photos of the party from a few weeks prior and we came across a photo of my son and his best friend at the time. I see them smiling arms around each other's backs and me thinking what a great photo of two 5 year old best buddies when low and behold I spy myself just behind them walking up the steps leading into the house and my bottom is 3 times the size of both of their heads put together. YIKES!!

How about that for a wake up call. That was when he was 5 and not even close to my heaviest. Again life happened and but with some difficulty. I was no longer a semi active person. Heck I hadn't remembered at the time when I had last did anything close to working out. I couldn't even remember using make up. Never owned a scale. Was not really in denial I was just oblivious. Purchasing clothes was kind of weird. I had worn chef clothes for years. When I wasn't working I was wearing sweats. All this coming from a girl who LOVES to dress girly, and yet I hadn't dressed size specific in years. Small to medium was not a big thing for me to see. But when I was grabbing hubby's large and not thinking anything of it because it's hubby's and it's baggy so no real problem. The light came on when I had to shop for a new pair of sweats. (I had rubbed the cloth away in certain areas, if you get my drift) Well there I was at wallyworld in front of the sweats looking for a large. I took them home tried them on and could not get my leg in. I died.

Do you ever get that feeling when you are so stressed your heart pounds, your ears are hot, your mind can only hear the whirring in your head because your ears can't hear a thing more than your heart beating? Your body is so stressed that you can't tell if you're able to breath or if you are breathing. At that moment, two things in the world I had never thought was possible had happened 1. I got old and couldn't remember getting there and 2. I got morbidly obese and couldn't remember getting there.

Life happens. Enjoy it to the fullest. Make sure that every moment you make is worth remembering. It was easy to live life to the fullest, making all those full moments memorable was the hardest part of my life. Every day all I can think about is what choices should I make for my body to be healthy, when really I should be thinking of more ways to findtime for my family. Right now it's still a struggle. I know how to do this. I know what to eat. But my mind wants to be done with it all. It wants to make memories with my family. But I still have to keep it focused on this journey. If I don't I may not be around to make any memories at all.

So that's me. Welcome to my mind. :) Enjoy the rest of my journey with me.

Raquel
A definite food lover
Never came across a cake I couldn't eat :)

:wel3fc: You have already accomplished so much~ 100 pounds! :bravo:I hope I can lose half as much weight as you lost. You can do it, you already have. Keep going!

:cb: