My Chunky Life Story

Hey MFP people. My name is Kaelyn. I am 22 years old. And this is my chunky life story.

The picture of me below (I'm the one on the bike) is pretty much the last time I ever remember being thin.




My dad's side of the family is big and tall and my mom's side of the family is petite and chubby and at currently 5'7 and 245lbs, I fall somewhere in between. I started gaining weight around first grade and I remember being weighed at school in about 5th grade and being 180lbs. That was super embarrassing. Here are all these kids barely hitting 100lbs if even and I'm nearly 200lbs. As a kid of course, I didn't really know how to control my weight so I kept gaining. The weird thing to me is I'd always been an active child. I played softball from 2nd-6th grade and even played a couple of years of basketball. I was also an outdoors kinda kid. Never owned a gaming system but always had a bike, roller-blades, and a scooter.
When I moved to a knew town in 7th grade that all changed though. I was the knew kid and I didn't really make any friends in my neighborhood so I didn't play outside like at all. I'd come home from school and chill in front of the tv. I gave up softball because I didn't wanna play in a new town. And I think I really started packing on the pounds then.

In fact here is a picture of me in 10th grade.



In high school most of my friends were chunky and by college I had pretty much resigned to the fact that I was gonna be a big chick for the rest of my life. I became more comfortable with it I suppose. But after my first year at GSU I think I fell into a depression and just kinda gave up on school and ended up moving back home. I got myself a job at Waffle House. It was the night shift and you could eat anything you wanted. I worked there for a little over a year. During my time kinda taking a break from college and being a working girl, my nana became sick. In June of 2011 she was diagnosed with lung cancer and she passed away in August of the same year. It's still one of the hardest things I have ever been through and I wanted to preach to everyone about the dangers of smoking and encourage them to quit. But then I realized I was so hypocritical. How could I preach about the dangers of smoking when i was carrying around so much extra weight. So I put my non-smoking plight on the back burner for a while and focused on school a bit (I had enrolled in a community college).

One day I decided to weigh myself on my roommates scale and I was very displeased with what I saw. I weighed 285lbs. I could not believe I was almost 300lbs. How did I let this happen? Like I said, I had become comfortable in my skin. And I would even tell my friends, I like me the way I am now but if I ever wanna lose weight I'm not gonna use some magic diet or pill because magic didn't make me this way and if I don't work for it I'll never be able to keep it off if I lose it. Well when I saw 285lbs, I knew it was time to get to work.

I joined this site around March of 2012. I also joined a gym around that time and lost about 20lbs.
Then I went through a little roommate situation and put working out on the back burner. I still watched what I ate, even if I didn't record it on MFP and when I picked back up in September was happy to see I hadn't gained anything back but maintained.

The picture below is me in September before I started the 30DS.




The picture below is me now.



I am nowhere near done. I have a lot more work to do. I don't have plans to be extremely thin. My goal weight is around 180lbs. I have my ups and downs. I'll start working out and the fall off a bit...like during the holidays. But what inspires me through that is that I realize that I can maintain even when my fitness isn't my main focus. But right now I am ready to make fitness a main focus again and would love it for anyone to join me