Out of the 300 Club!!

I reached my heaviest weight recently of nearly 310 pounds.  However, I am happy to say that I am now 299 pounds and have met one of my short term goals of getting out of the 300s!

I am so proud of myself, yet so ashamed at the same time.  I want to be happy, but I really am having conflicted feelings.  I want to shout it from the roof top that I am no longer 300+ pounds, but that would also involve admitting that I did once weigh that much.  I want to be happy that I've lost 11 pounds, but it's also very daunting to think that I have so far to go before I reach my goal weight.  I've lost nearly 6% of the weight that I want to, but that still leaves 94+% that I have left to lose.

When I was 21 years old, I had reached my then-heaviest weight of 240 pounds.  I was in a very complicated and abusive relationship and was very unhappy.  I picked up his bad habits of eating horribly, not exercising, and not getting good sleep due to his instabilities.  Once I dumped him, I ate better, exercised more, and got better sleep.  In 10 months, from these small changes, I lost 120 pounds!

People would tell me how great I looked, yet there was also this implication that I once looked horrible.  When I would tell people how much weight I lost, they would be happy for me, but also kinda grossed out that I was once so big.  I heard more than once, "well, you shouldn't have let yourself get so big in the first place, then you wouldn't have had to lose so much weight."  For every compliment, there seemed to be at least 10 criticisms or at least implied criticisms.

I had hoped to never get so big again, but I now weigh much more than I did back then.  At least when I was 21, I gained weight from simple and easy to correct issues.  My issues now are hormonal and way harder to correct.  I didn't gain weight during my pregnancies.  In fact, with my pregnancy with my daughter, I actually lost weight.  However, I gained 100 pounds with each kid.  I think a lot of it was the lack of sleep once again.  Breast feeding is supposed to help with combating weight gain, but I nursed both of my kids and still gained tons of weight.  My kids are now nearly-6- and nearly-8-years old, so I have more freedom to do things for myself and don't have babies and toddlers that need me 100% of the time.  Don't get me wrong, I loved having babies and loved nursing despite the weight gain.  The health was more important than my own, but I now know that I need to take care of myself in order to be there for them in the long run.

I know I need to just take it one day at a time, but I'm a long-term planner, so it's hard to focus and be proud of today.

Thanks for reading!

 ~Hot-Mommy