I was an unhappy girl with no self-esteem, trapped beneath baggy t-shirt and stretchy jeans and desperate to lose weight to just be normal. I had no idea that it would turn into a journey of self-discovery, freedom, and finding joy.

Oh yeah, and 100-pound weight loss.

was a cute kid. A really, really cute kid (that’s me being cute in between my two older sisters in the picture below)….until 1st grade.

That’s when I started to become the chubby kid.

And then I became the fat kid (that’s me on the bottom right in the huge blue poncho).

I don’t really know why I started overeating in the first place.

Maybe because I was a daddy’s girl and I wanted to keep up with his portions to be just like him.

Possibly because I was stubborn and knew my mother wanted to eat healthily, so I rebelled by sneaking junk food.

Perhaps I just really loved food (and still do!). On the day after I was born, my mom wrote, “It seems like you just want to eat ALL the time!” <- Yup.

I remember my grandmother making a comment once about how shocked she was that I could eat so many slices of pizza.

And I remember feeling proud of being able to do so.

I loved junk food and would sneak into the kitchen late at night and find the unhealthiest food my mom had hiding in the kitchen…and I’d eat it all in one sitting.

Whether it was a box of Nutty Bars, a bag of chips, or some really delicious leftovers, I’d devour them.

My mother was (and still is) a fantastic cook. She always made a ton of flavorful, healthy, homemade meals, but I never appreciated them.

I was always begging for processed foods, prepackaged foods, and fast food.

I would have taken a Lunchable over a sandwich any day and wished I could live off of donuts, tater tots, and cupcakes.

I vividly remember wishing someone would replace all water fountains with Kool-Aid fountains (fun fact – I didn’t start liking plain water until I was 27 years old).

In middle school, I played volleyball, which helped to keep my weight in check at least a little bit.

I loved the actual game and even made the A team, but I hated the running.

I was always the slowest, I always finished last, huffing and puffing, needing tons of walk breaks, even just during the warm-up laps. I could block, bump, and spike like nobody’s business, but I remember always feeling second best because I was the girl who had to take the highest number of uniform because the numbers correlated to the size.

High number = big uniform.

It was like my weight was being announced to everyone, wearing my shame on the outside.

I played tennis from my freshman through junior year of high school and, again, really enjoyed the sport, but abhorred the running. Our coach was a middle-aged guy who could run circles around me. The entire team would have finished their laps around the field, while I was still stumbling along next to the (also middle-aged) assistant coach, who I’m quite sure they sent in as an attempt to get me to run faster.

It was ineffective.

But because of the regular exercise, I did start losing some weight.

When I moved out of the dorms and off campus (away from the rec center) the next year, I slowly started gaining weight back.

I’d exercise occasionally and kind of try to watch what I ate, but I didn’t really know how to cook, so I mostly stuck with boxed options.

Macaroni and cheese and Hamburger Helper are not the ideal meals for weight loss and after I’d regained those pounds, they stayed.

And stayed.

Until late 2007.

That year, I fell in love.

We dated, we got engaged, and then he was deployed, and I lived in a constant state of stress.

I drifted to the other extreme of unhealthy weight loss.

I was miserable. I thought worrying was the only thing I could offer at that point and since I couldn’t control what was going on overseas, I decided to control my eating. I was living alone and, for most that year, I probably ate between 500-800 calories a day.

I was hungry a lot, not exercising at all, had no energy, and my stomach was constantly in knots, but I lost 40 pounds, bringing me down to 160. That was the lightest I’d been since I could remember (literally. I obviously had to have been 160 pounds at some point in my life as I was gaining the weight, but I have no idea when that was).

After a rough start to the year with a devastating divorce, 2014 became one of the most influential years of my life (and my weight loss journey).

That was the year that all of the pieces of healthy habits that I had been building over the years finally fell into place.

So, I joined a gym.

I was really only comfortable using the elliptical. I was too scared to try any of the classes offered and the weight machines were just intimidating. Gym people always seem to know what they’re doing and I just…didn’t.

A person watching me exercise was. the. worst.

Mostly because I was so weak that I struggled with a lot of the exercises she gave me and as sweet as this girl was, she continuously expressed how surprised she was at how little I could lift/push/squat/whatever else. Even though I was still 55 pounds less than my heaviest, I felt completely inadequate and just wanted to hide.

P.S. Thank you for reading my story...

I hope you will enjoy my journey: )