This is me...FINALLY introducing myself

Ok, here goes. I started on here a year ago and then stopped. Started again almost 2 months ago but I've never really taken the time to introduce myself. I'm Jessie, from St. Louis, Mo. *GO CARDINALS!* I'm 33 (actually 29 and holding, lol), a relatively new nurse, 2 years now, and am tired of being fat. Friends try to make it easier by saying, "you're not fat, you're thick...or, you're PHAT (Pretty Hot & Tempting). This is crap. I'm past these things. I'm morbidly obese. Actually, if there's such a thing as it being more so than morbidly obese, I'm probably whatever that is. This site is actually kind of intimidating. Seeing so many people have such amazing success...on one hand I'm thinking, if they can do it, so can I. But, on the other, I'm thinking how will I ever have that kind of success?? I really don't ever remember a time when I wasn't fat. Several years ago I became seriously ill (female issues) and almost died..I lost quite a bit of weight then but it was because I was so sick. It was amazing how good I felt afterwards to hear people call me "skinny". Granted, I wasn't skinny by society's standards but was definitely skinny compared to what I was. But, sadly, I had to almost die to reach that point. When I started here over a year ago, I thought I was doing pretty well, then, out of no where, I developed a case of Bell's Palsy. Google it if you've never heard of it, it's quite interesting. I freaked out because, even though most cases resolve within a couple of weeks, I knew someone that had it for several years so I got extremely scared. I gave up on trying to take care of myself because I thought, stupidly, if I'm going to get sick while trying to be healthy, what's the point??? I so wish I had stuck with this a year ago!


All through school I was always the biggest, even out of most of the boys. I always hated gym because of having to run. jump. exercise, etc. in front of people. I hated lunch time because of having to eat in front of other people. I hated class time because of the desks being a tight fit. I always wanted to be one of the cute skinny girls that could be a cheerleader, a soccer player or in the school plays. I was always to embarrrassed of how I looked to ever do any of those things. I always felt I was to fat to be able to do any of those things. The sad thing is, I look back at those times now and wish I was that fat again. Because, it was a hell of lot smaller than I am now. Now, my niece is in a similar situation, she's in grade school and the biggest girl in her class. I don't want her being as miserable through school as I was.

A little background..my mom has been overweight my entire life and so have my siblings. My oldest sister is a good 6 inches taller than me so @ least she's better distributed. I'm 5'2' and (when I started 2 months ago) was 319lbs. That's not a whole lot of room to distribute that much weight, So, basically, since 5th grade, I've been short & fat with huge breasts. As if a girl doesn't get picked on enough for devloping early, add the fact that I'm fat and you can imagine how fun middle school was. When I was in high school my dad would look @ overweight women and say, "don't ever get that way. I'll pay for you to go to Jenny Craig so you don't ever let yourself look like that". To me, not only was he making fun of whoever he was looking at but he was also making fun of my mom and me. I feel like I'm a huge disappointment to him because I look way worse now then the women he used to point out. My 2nd oldest sister was always skinny when we were kids and I envied her all the time. Fast forward to teen years and our family's fat genes finally caught up with her too. She was overweight until her late 20s until she started dating a body builder and she applied her OCD to her weight loss. She got down to about 130 and looked AMAZING! My brother was always the fat kid in class too. Getting picked last for sports, being the punch lines of his so called friend's jokes, etc. Watching the things he went through (we were very close in age) made me even more leery of trusting people. I've lost both my 2nd oldest sister and my brother in the space of 3 years of each other. And, then, a year later, I also lost my brother in law (my oldest sister's husband), he died from complications of gastric bypass surgery.

I'll be honest, I've never really tried to lose weight. I have a huge fear of failure. I absolutely hate to fail at anything. I think this is why I've never seriously tried to lose it. Because, I don't think I can. Years ago, before I got sick, I had joined a gym and people said you could really tell a difference. People started telling me how good I looked and I really enjoyed working out. Then I got sick and couldn't, by dr's orders, work out for almost 3 months and never got back into it after that. I put off going to school forever because I was scared I wouldn't do well & because I remembered how miserable school was for me. But, losing so many people you care about in such a short time, made me realize tomorrow is never a guarantee and you need to live today. I realized to do the things I want to do, I need a career, not job, so, I did it. I went to school and I did really well, and as of 2 years ago, I am now a licensed nurse. I work 12 hour shifts, which can be downright miserable at my current weight. I wasted my teen years and my 20s as a fat girl. I'm tired of being the "funny friend" or "the girl with the pretty face", I want to be the hot friend. I recently heard a co-worker say she didn't want to take care of an overweight patient (he was 325 lbs) because, "why should I have to take care of him if he obviously doesn't care about taking care of himself?" I know people look at me and think similar things. I don't want to end up in the hospital and be to fat for a procedure/test like my brother in law was. I love going dancing, camping, hiking, skating, boating, floating, swimming,....so many physical things that I don't do because I know people are thinking "what is SHE doing here? SHE can't do stuff like this". Needless to say I'm miserable and am ready to live my life. I know next to nothing about calories, or how much fat, protien, etc. one is supposed to eat in a day. I'm like a babe in the woods when it comes to this stuff but it's time I change my life. I want to change my life. I want to finally be able to love myself and LIVE my life.

Sorry this has been so long and to whoever actually read the whole thing (or even most of it) thank you. For reading and for letting me vent;