About Me

I feel as though I have been a "Born and Raised Fat Girl". Never in my life have I been thin or skinny. I was a solid  baby and a chubby child. I spent my childhood being called things like "Vanessa Big as a Trailer Taylor" among many other things. People always told me that I was fat. I was always the fat girl with the skinny pretty friends. I always felt like I was just kind of the girl that everyone just tolerated. I didn't really have a lot of confidence and all of my friends did. They said what they wanted when they wanted and they worked a lot harder to make people like them than I was willing to. When I was younger I was not a particularly nice person either. I was nice to the people that I liked, but you definitely did not want to be on my bad side.

Now I look back at pictures and mentally curse at the people who always told me that I was fat. I was just a normal girl, a little on the chubby side, but normal. I was not FAT by any means. I have a distorted self-image. When I was younger I saw myself as fat. And now I don't see myself as nearly as fat as I am. 

I slowly gained weight over the course of the four years after high school. I probably went from weighing about 180 to weighing 230 pounds over four or so years. I think a lot of this weight gain came from lots of binge heavy weekend drinking and late night "Jack-in-the-Box to prevent hangover" runs. When I got to be around 230 pounds I decided it was time to do something. My feet were always in pain, I was feeling miserable, and I was being self destructive. I was completely unhappy with myself. This is when I joined Sparkpeople. I also started walking very often with my mom. Summer was almost over and the constant weekends of heavy drinking were slowing. I started walking most days with my mom and trying to follow the Sparkpeople plan. I managed to lose about 20 or so pounds and keep it off for about a year just doing things on my own. I wasn't tracking but I was maintaining.

After this year of maintaining, I decided to take Sparkpeople seriously again. My best friend and I joined a gym and I commited to a healthy lifestyle. I went vegetarian. I went to the gym at least five days a week. From January 2011-March 2011 I managed to get down to 187 pounds. I was feeling so good in my new body. And I was loving my gym time. I was cooking like a madwoman and eating healthy all day every day. This is when I have felt the best in my entire life. I felt accomplished every single day. If I couldn't make it to the gym, I still went for walks by myself or with my mom. When I got home from the gym every night, I still wanted to move. I would do yoga and other things at home because I was feeling just that good.

And then, my whole world came crashing down on me:

My sister had been sick for quite some time. Honestly, she had been quite sickly most of her life. Then she started using drugs in 2005. This made for things to be much worse for her healthwise. This was my very closest sister for years. I lived half of my life at her house. When I was little, she brought me everywhere with her. I was her baby. When she started using drugs and mistreating my niece and nephew I wrote her off. I did not speak to her for 5 years. In May of 2010, she was put on life support. She was still using drugs at this point and had let herself get to a very bad place. With the thought of losing her becoming so real, I decided to forgive and forget as much as I could. I started speaking to her again and spending more time with her. Her health was very iffy from May 2010 through February 2011. In February 2011, she was put on Hospice. My mom moved her into our apartment building so that we could watch over her and take care of her right away. She very quickly got worse and worse until very unexpectedly she fell out of bed in the early morning of May 18, 2011.

Although we planned to let her live out her days at home, an ambulance was called. After a short time at the hospital with her, my mom started making the calls that we all needed to get there as soon as possible because she would not be with us much longer. I got my niece up out of bed and headed straight there. She held on just until my dad and her son got there. Within 10 minutes, she took her last breath.

None of us were prepared. This was single handedly the hardest day of my life. It also happened to be Preston's 21st birthday. So I tried to pull through to give him at least a special birthday dinner. My life will never be the same since this day. I still hurt every single day over this loss. I miss her every day and I think about her every day. We are all very sad without her here.

Exactly one month later, on June 18,2011, my grandfather succumbed to prostate cancer. He put up a long fight. It was so hard to sit there and watch him get worse every single day. We all just supported each other and wished he would pass peacefully. Once he did, it was a relief and a heartache at the same time. He was such a wonderful man and he was hardly recognizable at the end.

I have never dealt with stress well. I usually try to just ignore it until it can't be ignored any longer. This led me to leave my healthy lifestyle I had grown over many months. I turned to a lot of pizza, mexican food, ice cream, laying in bed, lounging, and being completely unhealthy. All of those unhealthy choices led me to gain about 60 pounds over the course of about 6 months. I reached my highest weight of 247 pounds around this time. I am currently back at this weight after losing about 12 pounds in 2012.

I can honestly say that I have struggled with my weight and image issues my entire life. I've never really had people tell me that I was beautiful or that I was perfect the way that I was. I have always thought of myself as weird, awkward, and too fat to fit in. I have always ate junky food. And I think I have always had a slight binge eating problem that has gotten worse over time. I enjoy candy, ice cream, and chips far too much. I overeat far too often. I drink far too much Red Bull. I stress eat far too often. This is what has led me to gain about 60 pounds in 6 months. I have issues that I need to work on. I have issues that I need to work through. I have problems just like everyone else. But I am going to start facing them and fighting them.

I am just a mid-twenties girl trying to juggle weight loss, exercise, new home ownership, wife duties, family, five fur babies, work, and everything else in between.

Please feel free to join me on my journey through this crazy thing we call life.