New journal with a renewed motivation…

Created this new journal today *just* for diet and weight loss recording. Here goes!

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A little background on myself…

I’m 26 years old, born and raised in Georgia. I was never naturally a “toothpick”, but I was naturally a 10/12, which worked well for my 5′2″ frame (I’m ‘big-boned’ for my height per my doctors). When I was in high school, I was always active - marching band, flag corps, dance corps, and I even ran the local lap with the cross country team from time to time (had a few friends on it who invited me to work out with them).

When I was in 10th grade, I took something my father said way too seriously — he and my mother had been through a fairly messy divorce when I was in middle school, and I had opted to move in with my father shortly before I started high school — “Allison, you’re fat like your mother.” I took what he said way too seriously and started losing weight.

No, not losing weight, shedding it. I stopped eating other than the occasional milkshake or salad from the school cafeteria. I dropped from a size 12 down to a size 6, at which point my father started complimenting my “weight loss” results. From all that non-eating, I wound up spending a good later portion of the summer before starting 11th grade in bed, sick. I knew that I was dehydrated because I wound up ‘bribing’ my younger sister to bring my glasses upon glasses of water because I was always thirsty. My father took me to the doctor once, who said that I must have been fighting the flu and that I should be getting better soon. I remember passing in and out of (what seemed to me) consciousness as I lay in bed. After a morning in which I twice passed out — we’re talking I ran into the wall and slumped to the ground — my father decided to take me to the hospital.

After going to Smyrna Hospital where I kept getting asked if I could possibly be pregnant, and I kept cracking jokes about “If I was, it would be the next virgin birth” (hey, give me a break, I was sick, ok?), I was transferred to Scottish Rite.

The initial tests showed that I had low blood counts (the count that’s normally 12 — hemoglobin? — was down to 2 or 3). After a couple of days of tests, including getting a marrow sample from my hip (tip: do not look at the tool they use before this procedure!!), a scan where they inject a small dose of radiation (where they stick you under what looks like a communion wafer so they can watch the flow of blood through your body), my first OBGYN appointment, and an upper and lower colonoscopy, they discovered that I had stomach ulcers.

Oddly enough, I had never had any symptoms of the ulcers - no odd bleeding, no stomach discomfort…

So, I was put on Zantac for a couple of years, as well as on birth control pills to regulate my periods (to control any unscheduled blood loss.

So, my junior year I started off on flag corps, then switched to pit percussion during the rest of the season because I had to eat at regular intervals, and my band director wouldn’t let me as long as I was wearing my flag corps uniform — plus I think she was worried that I would get sick again.

My senior year I was back up to a size 8/10 by graduation time.

My freshman year of college I went to Georgia Southern University, and was constantly walking everywhere. I marched flute, I walked to all of my classes, as well as the laundrymat and library. So I was walking at least 1-2 miles every day. Yet I still started to gain weight. I remember the first time I noticed was February 1996 - I noticed because I had gotten those ‘wrinkles’ on the insides of my knees. I was doing stomach crunches, yet still starting to gain.

I got up to a size 18/20 within the next year(ish), and now I’m a 20/22. My metabolism was basically killed from my starving myself 10 years ago, and even eating right doesn’t dent my weight by much.

So, it is now October 2003, and I’m determined to do everything I can to get back to where I physically want to be - a size 12/14 (135 lbs). I have the gym membership (Crunch), I have Weight Watchers materials, I just need to get rid of my sinus infection so I can breathe, and then I get this this diet started!

My goal timeframe: To get to 125-135 by June 2005, exactly 10 years after I graduated from high school. Hey, gotta impress them at the reunion anyway, right? ;-)