Whale Watching (A Brief History)

If you want to take this journey with me, then you ought to know a little bit about the person behind the blog! I am a wife to a wonderful man and the mother of a handsome little boy. I have always had issues with my weight and body image and I don't think that is going to be something that changes. Although I have had an emotional connection to food since I was a young child, I have not always been fat.

I have gone through phases of being too skinny, average, plump, (not in that order) but I have finally landed myself in the world of OBESE. During my pregnancy with my wonderful, handsome little guy I had some unforeseen complications. My husband and I moved in with a couple to help them out financially and as they say: no good deed goes unpunished! They were slovenly people who did not clean up after themselves and did not respect that other people had to live in the house as well. Both my husband and I had two jobs and we were not going to be both the financial providers for these people and the maid service, so we made the decision to go out to eat basically every single night. We were also saving up to get into a new place, sans the garbage pail kids and made the further decision to eat as cheaply as possible which meant fast food.

We ate at all of the usual fast food restaurants and I found out that it is true what they say about eating while pregnant. Every cookie is equal to 10 cookies, so that means that every double cheeseburger is equal to 10 double cheeseburgers as well. By the time we had saved up enough money to move out of the house that we were in and into our own apartment I was 5 months pregnant and 30lbs heavier. I tried to be healthier for the rest of my pregnancy but I found out that I had gestational diabetes which caused a whole new pile of problems. I was put on a special diet (which I followed) but I still gained 20 more pounds! I guess this is a good time to mention that at the start of my pregnancy I was the plumpest that I had ever been, which was a whopping 210lbs, so with all of this weight gain I ended up landing myself at 260lbs.

After I had my son I had dropped back down to 230lbs (a lot of other stuff comes out when you give birth, not just a baby), I struggled to eat healthy while also caring for a new born and I made the horrible mistake of saying "Let's just order a pizza" a few too many times and instead of losing weight while breastfeeding, I managed to GAIN. So I found myself back at 260 (my pre-delivery weight), got extremely depressed, and basically threw in the towel. I felt like I could never ever lose this weight that I have gained and I stopped caring. I went back to the easy regimen of fast food and I even threw in some dessert on top of it to soothe my pain.

I was very self concision and I had a hard time being happy about anything (including my marriage) but the full reality of the situation hit me when I went on vacation to celebrate my son's first birthday and to go see my family. We arrived at our destination and while nobody said anything, I felt like they were staring and thinking "What happened to her?". The last time I had seen these family members, I was 150 lbs, wearing a size 10 and now here I stood, a size 22/24 beluga whale. We enjoyed our vacation and we ate lots of fast food (we were in an area that had several places that my husband had never tried before, and it saves on expenses) and when we got home I decided to weigh myself for the first time in a very long time.

280 lbs.! I could not even believe it. I have heard of people letting themselves go, and I have even seen it myself, but before my pregnancy weight, the heaviest I had ever been was 190lbs. I never in a million years thought that I would be this close to 300 lbs... Not EVER. I already told anybody who would stand still long enough to hear it that I needed to lose weight, but I upped my blabber (while not doing much to actually lose weight) until finally one day a woman had an answer that worked for me.

She is a former co-worker and she mentioned that her dirty little secret is that she used to be a whale too. She is rail thin, has four kids and I thought she was just being nice, until she brought in pictures. She told me to watch a documentary called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/). It changed her life. I resisted for a while, because I am a moron, but I finally watched it and it has changed my life.

I have previously completed a 21 day juice fast and it brought me down to 229 lbs. I gained some back, but that was to be expected because when you eat you fill your intestines back up. I also went back to eating foods that are not so good for me. I tried to do another juice fast, but I picked a rotten time to start (10 days before Christmas) and I did not complete it. I have decided that I should strike when the iron is hot so to speak, and use the extra padding in my bank account to fund a full 60 day re-boot. I hope to hear from people on my journey to lend support, give suggestions, or just to let me know that I am not writing this for no reason at all. Feel free to ask any questions, I will be happy to answer them for you even if I have to do a little research to find you the correct answer! Thank you in advance for your support!

Happy Juicing!