Food affection

p33nser

Hi all, I'm Stella. I have tried using this site half-heartedly in the past, but today I decided enough is enough. I am often my own worst enemy, and I find myself having sabotaged so many things I've set out to do. I don't know why, or even how, this happens. But today, I am changing it up. I am determined to take steps I need to get out of the prison my body has become.

I am 36 years old, born & raised in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I had always been the fattest, poorest, loneliest kid growing up. We moved around the area a lot, so I never really made friends, just sort of did my own thing. I came from a single parent, broken home, and I wasn't treated well. I grew up using food as my "feel good" because it never hurt me. Or so I thought back then. My eating habits have never been healthy, growing up we ate potato chips, bologna sandwiches, Oreo cookies, my mom's idea of healthy was carb-laden and I don't recall there ever being any fresh fruits or vegetables besides the occasional banana.

I remember quite clearly, at the tender age of 9, weighing in at 125 lbs. (back then, that was considered the "ideal" weight for beautiful women according to TV and tabloids) and thinking to myself that if I just never gained anymore weight, I'd be beautiful when I grew up. That was in fourth grade. I was also removed from the volleyball team that year by the coach, also my teacher, because he felt I was too fat to keep up with the team. By sixth grade, I was over 200 lbs. By high school, I was almost 300. I was bullied and ridiculed relentlessly in high school about my weight, and when I went to the vice principal for help, he actually told me it was my own fault for letting myself be so fat. As an adult, looking back, I should have fought that and got him fired. As an emotional, lonely teenager, it cut my feelings so deeply and I ran from it. I refused to go back to school. I was so traumatized by that event that the two tries my family arranged for me to go back to school in other locations were met with the same refusal. I was terrified of being rejected like that again. I opted at the age of 15 to get my G.E.D. through the community college and that was that.

Fast forward to 2009. I nearly lost my life that year. I had what I thought was a bad chest cold in September of that year. By October, I was no longer able to get out of bed, or stand, and I would lay in my own urine for hours because there was nobody there to help me. I had a room mate who sort of felt I'd brought it on myself and she was detached from me until I collapsed onto the floor trying to get up to remove the urine soaked bedding from under me. An ambulance was called, and things get hazy after that. I blacked out, woke up days later in ICU to face the news I had suffered congestive heart failure and respiratory failure. They also informed me that I weighed 574 lbs. My body had pretty much had it with the abuse I was putting it through and went on strike. I was 33 years old, way too young to die.

Fast forward to now. Between then and now, I had gotten my weight down to 387 lbs. but a bad fall which revealed a previously undiagnosed case of Osteoporosis laid me up for several months while my weakened bones attempted to heal. I got discouraged, and turned to my good buddy food. By the time I was healed and released from the nursing facility I rehabilitated in, I was at 420. And now, here I am at 540, just two years later. I swore to myself I would NEVER, EVER, become this big again. I guess I lied because here I am.

I keep telling myself I'm over it and I'm changing, but I get discouraged, or bored, and right back to the bad stuff I go. I watch shows like Extreme Weight Loss, My 600 lb. Life, Biggest Loser and I think "I could do that. If they can, I can" but I never do. I want to, but there is a road block between wanting and doing, and either I'm so far in denial I can't see it, or I just can't figure out what it is at all. I'm not sure, but this time is for keeps. This time I'm fighting for life. This time there's no turning back. No more bad food in my house. No more slacking off. No more "Oh, I'll get back on track tomorrow" because there might not be anymore tomorrows. And I'm not ready to die. I'm NOT!