My Battle with Weight

For me the decade of my twenties have been a time of repeated weight gain and weight loss.  The first time I gained weight was in college, the good old "freshman fifteen." I technically gained the weight my sophomore year and it was ten pounds rather than fifteen, but you get the point.  I am 5' 7" and started college at what I call/called my "normal weight" of 135.

For a long time I had wanted to cut meat out of my diet.  When I was younger I accidentally caught these HORRIBLE!!! videos portraying the atrocities that were the lives of factory farming animals, both of their day-to-day lives and their slaughter.  I had just been flipping through tv channels and caught the videos on a random cable-access channel and they honestly scarred me for life!  I feel like most of the general public have NO CLUE what happens to these animals, I didn't.

I had tried to become vegetarian a couple times from age 11 to 18, but eating just the green bean and salad portion of the meal my parents made didn't cut it and it never stuck.  My sophomore year was the first time I was solely in control of my meals and I easily transitioned to a vegetarian diet.  When I say "vegetarian diet" I mean that I didn't eat any meat or poultry or anything with beef or chicken broth, but I did continue to eat seafood, eggs, milk, and cheese.

 A lot of people don't think that qualifies as "vegetarian" but they can kiss my ass.  I'd like to see them eat the way I was eating, it was a sacrifice but it was worth it and it was the best I could do. I'm not really into seafood, but it gave me a little wiggle room when eating out and I am so in love with dairy, that I don't think I could ever cut that out of my diet.  Yes, I was still eating by-products and yes, I kept all of my heels that were made from leather.  Though this lifestyle change really made no change what-so-ever to factory farm animals or the way that they are treated, it felt right to me.

At this same time, my college roommates and I got a new roommate, a girl named Erin.  Now, Erin is awesome in many ways, but that is another story for another time, but Erin loved aerobics classes. Between being a bit more conscious of what I was eating (trust me, I still DOWNED my own ice cream pints on the regular) and tagging along with Erin to a few workout classes here and there, that first ten pounds melted away in no time.    

The next time I gained weight was in 2007 and this time it wasn't a measly ten pounds, but 36 pounds! It was right after I graduated from college and I got a work visa for the UK and moved to London.  During a half a year period I went from my 135 pounds to 171 pounds!!!  This period of my life was truly one of the most fun, but I felt quite stressed.  I was trying to juggle many things including doing some extensive traveling on a pretty tight budget and I don't know, I just started eating chocolate instead of food and the pounds piled on.  I mean, I was taking down A LOT of chocolate.  I am a serious emotional eater.

I lost five pounds of this weight gain the first month I moved back to the US by exercising with my brother at a near-by Snap Fitness a couple times a week.  But after a month, my brother decided he was too lazy to exercise (I'm not criticizing him, this is actually what he said) and I really only liking working out with a partner.  The rest of the weight melted off very slowly, just by eating well.  After about a year I was back at my 135 pound weight again.

And the final weight gain thus far, I was dating and living with this guy for a few years and the relationship was HORRIBLE (not a love story.)  I also started eating the way he ate and here I am now weighing 166 pounds.  Not only am I overweight, but I am also in a terrible "funk" stemming from this relationship.  I kicked him out of the apartment we shared and moved back in with my parents after the apartment lease was up.  That was exactly six months ago today and I thought things would be so different, but I can't get out of this dysfunctional funk.  I feel like I have the energy or motivation to do things with friends, to clean my room, even to shower.

This year was supposed to be the year of ME! I wanted to heal and get back to where I started, heck I wanted to be at a better place than the place I started but that hasn't happened.  So here I am now, ready to take itsy bitsy baby steps back to health.  Have any of you had experiences like this? Any words of advice?