My "not so" 600lb Life

Got my wings, dip, fries, coke, and ready to pick a show to watch. Can not help but dream about the strawberry cake awaiting dessert as I speak into the remote, "My 600 lb Life". The show, "My 600 lbs Life", is a documentary style show that chronicles one year in the life of individuals who are close to or weigh more than 600 lbs. Participants do their best to prove they are ready for weight-loss surgery through rigorous diet and exercise. I don not remember when I started watching this show, but I remember when it became a problem. There is nothing wrong with being intrigued by others defying impossible weight loss goals. There was, however, a problem with watching solely because I felt guilty about the food I was about to eat.

Just like my guilty pleasure binge, I'll start with a little back story as to why I believe my eating sometimes gets out of hand. I grew up with two brothers. If you have siblings close in age, you know everything, and I mean everything had to be fair. I enjoyed food. I viewed good food as a treat. When eating delicious treats like cake, ice cream, and candy, my brothers could never dare have more than me. This way of thinking caused me to competitively eat alongside the metabolism of a boy who is two years my senior. The dollar menu debuting the same year my father took over dinner detail is an honorable mention, but if my problem stopped there, maybe we would not be here today. As I grew older, I began to find comfort in food. I looked forward to it a little bit more than I thought I should. I was definitely overweight, but nothing I could not hide by sucking my stomach in when being photographed. I remember being about nine years old when I first felt the need to suck in my "gut". In fact, it wasn't until I could no longer suck it in comfortably throughout the day, at about twenty-two years of age, did I begin to think it was truly a problem.

A noticeable difference in my physical appearance was enough for me to admit I had a problem, but not enough to understand where the problem came from. Like many patients that visit Dr. Nowzaradan's office for the show, I may need therapy to uncover why I treat food the way I do. Participants in the show are often abused, molested, and neglected. They briefly escape the troubles of the day when they eat food, so they do it as often as possible. I feel like I identify with a lot of Dr. Nowzaradan's patients, because food only became a big part of my life when my parents separated. It became my job to prepare a lot of our meals, so I began to think about food a lot more. I had to fill the void of separated, working parents, and delicious food made it easier to do so. Finding something delicious after school to eat was my favorite thing to do. The habits I developed eating as an unsupervised teen created a bigger dieting problem in my twenties.

After realizing I could no longer eat like I did but not willing to change my diet, I began fasting. It was an accident actually. Working seventeen-hour shifts waiting tables is an easy way to forget to eat for the day. Checking the scale after two doubles in a row is a quick way to develop an eating disorder if you're a troubled youth constantly worried about her weight. I discovered I could lose ten to fifteen pounds in just a couple weeks if I worked really hard. Good, right? I began to consider my problem a food addiction when I ate constantly, while planning to fast a couple days later. I would seriously want to change my habits for good, so I ate my favorite foods that I would "miss" when I start my new diet, but quit my new diet shortly after it started. This pattern continues constantly today.

Like many who made the visit to Houston, Texas to be treated by Dr. Nowzaradan, I have started the journey to healthy living several times. I will continue to learn more about why I eat the way I do, and make changes to my everyday lifestyle to control my weight. I am grateful for the metabolism I have and the desire to be mobile because my poor eating habits do not stop me from living and appearing "ok" on the outside, but listening to the testimonies of the TLC stars made me truly stop and think about why I feel sad when I eat unhealthy meals, and continue to eat unhealthy meals daily. I selfishly feel good when patients reach their goal because shallowly, I feel if they can do it, I can do it to. However, after trying to lose the baby weight from my second pregnancy, I found myself slipping into some of the same fast/binge behavior I thought I had left in the past.

Shelter-in-place orders gave me a chance to regroup in a lot of ways, but also left me revisiting some eating habits I had once again decided to drop in the new year. Losing my job, childcare, and becoming a homeschool teacher overnight in my opinion made it ok to binge a little bit, as long as I got in shape before summer. It was all supposed to be over by Easter right? Almost a year after the first SIP order, I find myself watching the show I feel guilty about watching, while feeling guilty about why I'm watching it. If it matters, I'm on what I call the up side of my guilty pleasure. I am so tired of binging in food and TLC that I am doing something about it. Most people on "My 800 lb Life" lose about 400l bs in a year. Let's see how fast I can correctly knock out these 44l bs.