Two days till I start

It is December 30th, 2009 and I am sitting on my ass on my couch with Gray's Anatomy on TV. I am 30 years old and six months, a Peruvian born American (as of May, thank you very much) and I am weighing in at 237 lbs. Yes, that is 2-3-7. In my own defense, I gave birth to my first son three months ago and I lost 25 of the 40 pounds I gained while pregnant. But I am still 237 today and I am not a happy camper about it.

I have been heavy all my life. I have always accepted it, embraced it even. My mother is a dietaholic and bounces from diet to diet the way I change my undies. First the cabbage soup diet, then the Adkins, then a homeopath in Peru who gives you herbs, Metabolife, Xenical (which gives you anal leakage, by the way), Scarsdale, Lindora, Weightwatchers, Jenny Craig; you name it, she has tried it and until I left her house, she made me do them too. I have eaten more egg whites with kale, low fat margarine and crappy cottage cheese sandwiches than I can count, only to lose five pounds, have her be happy with me and then gain them back and disappoint her. It was an endless cycle.

When I was 19, I went on Metabolife with her. I lost weight. I lost ALOT of weight, from a comfortable size 14 to a 9. She was so happy with me, so proud of her daughter and all the new clothes she could buy. But what she didn't realize was that the pills made my appetite go away and I was eating maybe one meal a day. The only time I lost weight, I did it in the most unhealthy way possible: taking pills that gave me a crazy heart beat and then made me not eat. Lovely. Needless to say, I regained the weight and here I am.

I do not want this to be a blog about how dysfunctional my mother is or about the past. Rather I want this to be about the future, my future as a healthy, happy mommy and wife and about making myself healthy. I want Baby Gerhard to look at the pictures from his birth and say, "look how big you used to be!" But, most importantly, I want to have the energy I used to have, to have to optimism I used to have and to feel good about myself once more. Because frankly, right now, I do not.

Two days till I officially start... here we go.