Where last we left off in my weight loss journey, it was the early aughts. I'd lost nearly 40 pounds doing Weight Watchers®, hit a plateau, struggled, started re-gaining, went to Mexico with a friend with a killer body and she went shopping at Zara and I still didn't fit into anything even though a size 12 isn't that big, so I just gave up on the whole watching-what-I-eat-and-exercising thing because that's always an effective way to get to and stay at a healthy weight.
Ugh.
Gaining weight is one of those insidious things that just kind of creeps up on you until you look in the mirror one day and say 'what the hell happened?!' I managed to stay a size 12 through a trip to Prague, Vienna and Budapest in 2004. (Sidebar: this 10-day trip was done with two carry-on size bags. This was back in the day when you could still fly with full-size shampoo, keep your shoes on during security check, and bring two fairly large carry-ons. How did a fashion plate such as myself accomplish a 10-day funfest with such small bags? The garbage. That's how I did it. I packed clothes that I could happily part with, knowing I'd be acquiring new pieces; at the end of each day I'd toss what I'd worn that day into the trash. It was AWESOME. I felt very clever. And while I've never repeated such a feat I always pack as many nice-but-unnecessary things as I can when I travel. This is super hard for business trips and trips to cold places, but give it a whirl - you may surprise yourself.)
I was a size 14 a year later when I went to Colorado. (Note that these were wide-leg Lucky 240s, the first pair of jeans I'd ever bought that cost more than $35. They were $90 in 2003 when I was in Vegas on business and a friend I met there convinced me to try something other than The Gap; the Lucky store associate was so kind - I was marveling that I fit into a 10 but freaking out at the price so she cut 20% off the tag. Remind me that I need to do a post on how to negotiate when shopping for clothes. Hint: just ask. Anyhow, I'd bought the larger 12s at the local store shortly before heading to Europe but by the time I went to Colorado I could only find 14s on eBay and was a little concerned because that's as big as they got. Spoiler: I got bigger.) That trip sucked a little. I was with three slim girls I worked with, and I huffed and puffed trying to keep up with them, and I had a super hard time bending down to tie my laces and my long wool coat barely buttoned.
Then life got really wacky. My dad was diagnosed with brain cancer; prognosis: 44 weeks. My employer wasn't too keen on me taking two unpaid days a month to fly cross-country to spend time with him before he died so I quit my six-figure job with the fancy title. (And I will never work for a small privately-held company that isn't compelled to offer FMHLA.) I promptly took a vacation to Alaska where my expanding waistline continued posing challenges to my traveling enjoyment. (Note: tour operators that use twin prop planes for hour-long sight-seeing tours do NOT like having fatties throwing off the balance of the plane. And it's uncomfortable for a big gal - those planes are not spacious.)
I spent the next year bouncing between Texas and my parents' home three hours' flight away. And I was unemployed for 16 months. It freaked me out. I didn't have unemployment because I'd quit my job (well-played, douchebag former employer). But somehow I survived, and found contract work in 2006. By the time my contract was up in early-2009, I was a size 16.
This time I was almost giddy to be out of work. I'd survived it before, and this time I was going to enjoy myself. I spent a lot of time meeting friends for lunch, because I could.
Found my third new job in five years, and I weighed 190; I'd re-gained everything I lost in 2002 and then some, over a period of 7 years. By then I'd discovered Chico's Travelers Collection - perfect for the fatty-in-denial: unstructured, elastic waist, wide legs. Everything a girl needs to make herself feel stylish-while-obese. Remarkably, I felt really good about myself. Part of that was having a boss who was pushing 400 pounds.
Alas, said 400-pound-boss was also a raging narcissist. If you've ever worked for one of those, it's nucking futs.
By the time I was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, I tipped the scales at 225. I was up 90 pounds in the 17 years that I'd been in Texas. That's the equivalent of a newborn calf. But it didn't happen all of a sudden. Even with the year or so of losing a lot and looking good, that's an average gain of a little more than 5 pounds a year, or about half a pound a month. I'm telling you, it's slow and insidious that weight gain thing.
And a funny thing about cancer (because cancer is hilarious). I talked in an earlier post about losing my hair (it wasn't that bad) but let me tell you cancer did NOT make me lose weight. I had six rounds of chemo, and for each round my tastebuds would stop working for two weeks. Most people would say about their meal, 'hey, this doesn't taste like anything so I'm just not going to eat this because why?' Not me! No sirree, I was all 'hey, this doesn't taste like anything but perhaps another bite with a lot more salt will be delicious. No? How about THIS bite?'
The only thing that kept me from getting even bigger was radiation. Since my abdomen was getting nuked, my intestines were getting cooked a little bit and becoming more susceptible to bugs. I wound up getting some mad intestinal infection and food poisoning at the same time and lost 25 pounds over a very short period of time. But then chemo started up again, and so did my weight.
So this is what I looked like in 2013, a year after my cancer treatment was done:
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| Me in 2013. I am obese. |
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| Me in 2018. Size 8 jeans. How'd I do it? Hint: Weight Watchers® |
To be continued...
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