Why did you gain the weight?

I come from a family where generations tend to run close together... by that I mean teenage pregnancy is prevalent. My parents took an approach that left me emotionally and socially crippled. From a very young age, I was told time after time after time that I wasn't allowed to date until I was thirty, and that school and college comes before love. All that taught me was that I wasn't good enough, pretty enough... I wasn't loveable. I was also taught not to defend myself or my opinions; that was considered back-talk and was a punishable offense. Now - I recognize that these weren't the lessons my parents intended me to learn, but that is the message that was deeply ingrained by these oft repeated scoldings.

Where this transitions to weight gain is... complicated. I don't take care of myself. I often eat only one meal a day, which kills my metabolism. When I do eat, it has often been fast food. Not that I can't cook, but cooking for one tends to be wasteful, and waste is another lesson that reinforces the "Bad Lori" reaction. It goes farther than food, though. My hygiene is questionable, because I don't care about myself. I live a high-stress life. My degrees are in Engineering, and the doctors tell me the job is killing me. I did walk away from the high-stress job - but I jumped straight into the high-stress environment of graduate school. Life is BETTER, but it's still not good.

I don't know how to begin making me a priority in my life. I'm working on that here... trying to make myself eat healthier food more often. Going on long walks several times a week that help me reflect on what's broken and why it's broken... trying to figure out where _I_ want to go next, instead of where I'm expected to go next. It's not pretty... I turn thirty in six months... I have nothing to show for my life but some impressive frameable pieces of paper, a run down body, and a struggling soul. I'm a work in progress.