there are times i feel like eating the entire cupboard...

and i used to. all the time. probably why i hit 350 lbs at the age of 24. how embarrassing. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!

the fact is that i know exactly how it happened. i have no idea how to eat a well-balanced, healthy meal, other than ordering the occasional salad at dinner. add on the sedentary lifestyle of college, dorm food, and alcohol, and suddenly, a girl who was moderately overweight in high school was suddenly grossly obese. with not a single skill to live a healthy life on my own.

i would not admit i had a problem. sure, my cholesterol was inching ever closer to 200, and my blood pressure was high, but i felt fine. i could eat, and watch tv, and i didn't get winded going up and down stairs. i was fine. then i started traveling for my first post-college job - and i couldn't buckle the seatbelts on the airplane. have you ever had to ask for a seatbelt extender? now that's a humbling/humiliating experience. so i started buying more vegetables and i bought some workout DVDs. and then i stopped buying veggies and bought more cookies, and i used the workout DVDs twice. and i didn't change a single bit of my lifestyle.

I AM 24! i'm supposed to be cute and thin and love going out to bars and parties. i'm NOT supposed to be 350 pounds, a size 28/30, and so FAT that i can't even buckle the seatbelts on the airplane!

i was looking for some way to change my life, but i was completely prejudiced against the thought of having to talk to someone about something i thought was a super personal journey/problem. maybe i could just do jenny craig and just eat whatever they told me to. or go to LA weight loss and take their magic pills or supplements or whatever. all good ideas, except that they're really expensive and i'm, well, broke.

my mom, unbeknownst to me, had started going back to weight watchers in may 2007, after having great success on it back in the late 90s. when my grandma died in 2002, she had given up and gained it all back. she offered to pay for me to go with her to weight watchers, and though i was really leery of it at first, i agreed to go. i had no idea what my weight was, but assumed it was around 300 lbs. and can i just tell you that stepping on that scale and seeing it hit 350 was the scariest, darkest, worst moment of my entire life?

i've been working the weight watchers program for over 4 months now, and i've lost more than 40 lbs. i've still got a LONG way to go to get to a healthy BMI, but at least i've started. have you?