Ok… I’m seventeen. Now, some of you might say “hmph… a seventeen year old on a weight loss forum? Yeah right, like she has weight to lose”. And yeah… I see where you’re coming from. Just hear me out before judging me though… please.
I’ve been on various diets ever since I was 11. Not long before I turned 11, my Dad began suffering from vertigo… having very bad attacks. He was diagnosed with miniears, and was told that he had lose weight. He was around 280 lbs at that time. I was around 120… and at 5’1” (or… I think I was a bit shorter than that actually), it made me a bit plump. So… the whole family went on Atkins. Throughout the six months we did it, I continued to cheat. I would go out and buy a chocolate bar, or do something else. I just did. I didn’t want to go on the diet in the first place. But I eventually did get down to 99 lbs. I felt amazing… I looked amazing… for an 11 year old.
And then… everything went downhill from there. We were living in Serbia (my parents are missionaries) at the time we started, and moved back to the USA for six months. During that time I began eating more (I never knew, and still don’t, how much I SHOULD eat), and slowly regained all of the weight I had lost by the time I was 12. And since then I’ve just been gaining and gaining. At 17 years old, 5’11”, I am around 220 lbs. I’ve tried calorie counting. I’ve tried going low carb again (I HATE eggs, bacon, sausage, and most meat products period)… nope. I’ve tried just exercising more… that hasn’t worked much. I did go from 215 to 180 last summer… but I’m back up again. I know that for some of you guys… 215… wha? Is she kidding me… I wish I was that thin… but… well… 200 period was always my high point. I feel ashamed. I feel out of control. I feel stupid. I often feel ugly. Not always. I like my curves… the good ones. However, I have way too many curves.
One thing I have to mention is that since I was 11, I have not lived in one place for more than a year. And no… I’m not talking city, or house… I’m talking about COUNTRY. I’ve been from the US to Serbia to Germany to Serbia to Germany to the US again. I have few friends. My dog is my biggest stress reliever… and she is currently living four hours away. I have a job at a vet clinic… but this is my last week working there, Saturday is actually my last day. I have no other stress reliever. I like to sleep… but I rarely get much because I’m always having to get up for school… which… is necessary. But I can’t go to sleep early because of school… so… it’s a lose-lose situation.
With the exercise, unfortunately… I have a condition that keeps me from doing that a lot of the time. It’s like heat rash… I break out in REALLY itchy hives every time my body heat elevates quickly. And if I don’t sit down or rest, I begin to feel VERY faint, there have actually been a couple times where I nearly have fallen to the floor in a dead faint, I usually sank to the floor like… a minute before that happened though. And… in most forms of exercise… your body heat elevates quickly… and… I really CAN’T push through this. I’ve tried going running… and it’s not that I have a stitch in my side, or that I’m physically exhausted necessarily… I just break out in hives and end up at a point where I can barely see strait for all the dots flying around in my head.
And to be honest… there really is no cure for this. Antihistamines do help… a little. Hardly at all though. After about a month and a half of Claritin every morning… I just stopped. It was doing me no good.
But yeah… with the weight. I feel as though I’ve tried everything. Half the time though… it’s not that I PURPOSELY decide to stop, or say “I failed, I give up”… I just… I forget. I forget that I’m supposed to be eating healthier, and I’ll grab the donut instead of the apple (ok… pear… I hate apples… ). It’s not a purposeful thing… It’s a subconscious thing.
Another reason why I don’t seem to keep with anything long… is as soon as I start something, and am feeling good… my mom takes over. And… if it helps anything… my personality type is an INTP. I can’t STAND being controlled… by anyone. Especially not my mom. And… my mom is an ENFJ. She likes to take control over things. She likes to be in control. And so… I’ll be calorie counting… and three days into it, my mom starts telling me what I should be doing, how I should be doing this or that… and yeah… I’ve TOLD her that I don’t like it when she does that, that it doesn’t help me AT ALL, and she’s like “oh… ok… I’ll see what I can do”, and literally… honestly… ten minutes later… she’s doing the same thing she was, telling me how I should do my weigh-ins/measurements, etc.
I’m a size 16, sometimes 14 depending on the piece of clothing. I want to be able to fit into a 10. An 8 would be nice… but not necessary. I want to be able to go to a store with friends, and not stand around awkwardly or start crying in the dressing room because the XL I grabbed just doesn’t fit around my boobs, or looks awkward, or… well… is just plain too small.
I just spent an entire hour looking around for a dress to my school’s Fine Arts Banquet (a dance for people in a Fine Arts class). It’s not that I didn’t find what I didn’t like… it’s that I couldn’t find one that FIT. I rarely buy anything because I like it… I buy it because it fits. I wear jeans and t-shirts. Rarely do I wear anything else… because I just don’t HAVE anything else.
My whole family on my Dad’s side is larger. Maybe my genes are just predisposed to be larger. I didn’t get the skinny gene from either side. There are members in that family who are thin… there are. I just didn’t receive that genetic luck.
I just… I feel like a failure. I’ve been trying to get to a HEALTHY weight… forget thin. Forget perfect. I just want to be at a healthy weight. I’ve been trying since I was 11. And look where I am. Nowhere. I’ve posted hundreds of these posts on various forums. I’m at a loss.
I eat… not because I’m upset. Rarely is that so. I eat sometimes because I’m bored and I have nothing to do… or I’m enjoying a movie or book… and it’s something to do. I eat more than I should simply because I don’t know how much is enough. I don’t know WHY I eat most of the time.
My parents say I’m being stubborn, or I don’t care about my life… that I have no self control. The thing is… I don’t know WHY I do the things that I do. My parents also say that I shouldn’t be trusted with anything if I don’t know why. I’m just… frustrated. Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. Maybe I’m scared of becoming pretty. Maybe I’m scared of what might happen if I lose the weight. Maybe I don’t really want to be healthy. I don’t know. I just really don’t know. I don’t know what to do…
I don’t want a lecture on how “take control of your life”. Yeah… I know that. But how? Most of the time I just FORGET that I’m doing this or that… it honestly just slips out of my mind… and… well… I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried notes. I’ve tried notebooks. I’ve done online and paper food journals… and exercise journals… I just… I don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t spend money on special pills or meal plans… I just can’t afford that.
Maybe I just keep making up excuses for my own laziness. I don’t know anymore.
Help………….
OH... and cookies... umm... should I say calorie free but completely delicious chocolate chip cookies? To anyone who read that... *sigh*