I dont want to blog about losing weight.
I know that must sound ridiculous seeing as how I am sitting here on ExtraPounds.com. But I want to blog instead about the emotional journey of setting a goal that seems impossible and working to achieve it.
My name is Allie. I love myself and my body. I embrace being a voluptuous woman and I don't want to change that. In fact, I want to be a role model for other women in the hopes that they will learn to accept themselves as beautiful no matter how they feel.
What I want to change is the way I often use and abuse food, myself and my body. Ask anyone who has struggled with weight, it is almost exclusively an emotional struggle above all else. It's never about being really hungry for food, we are hungry for something else - usually to fill a big, gaping open emotional wound we carry just beneath our exterior.
Strip away my thighs and my arms and my wobbly bits and you know what you'd find? A great deal of unresolved emotional issues that I am working to conquer.
But before I get into that, I want to share my story with you a little.
For most of my life, I have thought of myself as fat, and therefore inferior. I was a chubby kid who was late to develop, but the struggles of a teenager seeking acceptance and dealing with pain and darkness she didnt know how to cope with turned baby fat into dangerous behavior.
At 14, I moved to a new school that was almost exclusively people that did not look like me and had far more money than I did. I know what you're thinking, waaaah, waaah, but even I forget how young I was then (just four years in double digits - lol, I know that sounds crazy, but think about it.)
Anyway, at 14 I gained forty pounds in just six months and learned eating habits that would spell a laundry list of struggles I carry even to this day more than a decade later.
When it comes to pain, some people use drugs, some people use food. It's all the same really: abusing something to the point where it impedes your daily life, your judgment and above all else, your health. I would self-medicate my teenage woes - which I will spare u deets of -- with carbs, fat, fast food and then an ensuing nap.
As a teen, I slept like crazy. Of course I did, all I did was gorge, unsuccessfully purge, cry, then sleep away the guilt for three hours. Then I'd wake up and eat more garbage. Then go back to sleep to wake up and repeat the day's behaviors. I graduated high school at more than 235 pounds. Im not sure the number, it could even have been close to 250. I will never know. I was a size 22 and not happy or healthy. I had high cholesterol and could barely do any activity.
Fast forward to college, where i lost weight. Yes, my eating habits were SO bad as a teenager that the dining hall, beer and pizza caused me to LOSE weight. It's unbelievable. I started taking somewhat better care of myself emotionally, allowing myself to believe that I was an attractive and worthy person.
At 22, after graduating, I weighed 224 pounds. And I can't say what sparked it, but I just decided I wanted to try and lose weight. I knew it was different that time bc something in my head was clear. I was at peace with it. And with that, something clicked. I learned how to eat and how to exercise and I lost weight. A lot of weight. Almost seventy pounds to be exact.
Then I started this blog at 23 in grad school in Chicago. Before I deleted to start from scratch tonight, i went back and read my posts. It was then I realized what I had always known but never allowed myself to believe...
You see, I THOUGHT that losing weight meant I was cured of the emotional issues. I thought if I was thinner and beautiful, that meant that i would never have to deal with the darkness inside of me again. I thought that sixty pounds was gone forever. I was obsessed with dieting, going from EXTREME diets of nothing but cauliflower, broccoli and protein shakes to weekends where I lived off McDonalds. I tried it all - Hydroxycut, Lean System 7, Lipo 6, fasts .. anything to get it off. And they worked. I weighed myself daily. I wrote my calories on napkins. I worked out twice a day. I lived and breathed my weight loss.
I was hardly better. No, instead, I was just differently bad.
I moved back to NJ with my parents in the summer of 2007. At that time I was 155 pounds and felt and looked fantastic. Within 2 weeks at home, I was probably back at 170. By December I was at 187. By June I was at 205.
And now, I am here, beginning my journey again. A little older, a little wiser, but a lot heavier.
I am now working in my dream field of journalism, trying to work my way toward broadcast. I am also a plus size model who thinks curves are the most beautiful amazing thing a woman possesses.
All of this does NOT mean that i dont still struggle with the emotional issues that caused me to gain and lose nearly 200 pounds in my lifetime.
Modeling and news are both industries frought with men and women who carry inside of them a darkness and a narcissism that most refuse to articulate.
Well, I am going to articulate it.
I am back here not because I want to be thin. I have been thinner and I have been fatter. Trust me, I was never a better person either way.
I am back here because I want to live a good, long and healthy life that inspires others. I am here because I want to teach my future children what it means to be a healthy, active person who is not just self-accepting, but also self-loving. I am here because I am living proof that you can love yourself and your body and still want to be healthy and improve it. I am here because I still abuse myself with unkind words, self deprication and excessive eating and drinking. I am here because there is still a pain in my heart that if I write in my blog, it will at least not be inside of me any longer. I am here because if I have these feelings, I know some of you do too.
You don't have to comment on my blog. You don't have to repost my words. Really, you don't have to read it. I just want to put it out there because so many of YOUR words help, inspire and touch me. And part of my goal in life is to help women and men who have dealt and continue to deal with the issues I stand up today to face.
Im going to write whatever I feel - uncensored. I am going to open myself up to the ghosts of the Web. And I am going to let those wounds be exposed to the air and the elements. And like everything else, they will surely heal.
I've been told God gives all of us our purpose right in front of our faces but most of us never realize it. The other day my pastor looked at me and said, "Al, you want to know how you learn your purpose? Take the issue that has been the biggest, most recurring issue in your heart and in your life and boom, there you have your first step. Whatever it is, decide to talk about it and slowly, your path will be revealed."
I just took the first step.
