mia97478
Every time I fill out one of these "about me" sections, I immediately hear Jim Lange's voice from the Dating Game.
"Bachelorette number two, if you were obese, what would you want people to know about you?"
Well, Jim...
I'm Mia from the beautiful, s̶u̶n̶n̶y̶, m̶o̶s̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶u̶n̶n̶y̶, mostly wet city of Springfield Oregon *cue The Simpsons intro*.
I'm 38, I am 5ft tall and I currently weight 285. Wow...285. When did THAT happen? I wasn't a big child growing up although right before puberty I did put on a bit of chunk. I was mostly a normal size kid, then puberty hit and suddenly I was the only girl in Jr High with boobs and hips. I was still petite (about 100 lbs) but my curves made me feel different from all the other girls, and in the mind of a 12 year old girl, "different" = "bad". I stopped wearing short sleeved shirts and shorts. I wore baggy clothes because I didn't want people to notice my shape. In my mind, I was fat and no one could possibly want to hang out with a fat girl. I did have friends, but I was painfully shy when it came to meeting new people. Once High School started, if a boy showed interest in me I would panic and run away under the assumption that I was the butt of some cruel joke.
At 14 (I promise I will jump forward to the present in a moment here) I met my husband (although he wouldn't become my "husband" for 8 more years). He was the first person I met that I truly believed liked me for me. I was starting to feel more comfortable in my body and started to feel more worthy of acceptance. The next year I became pregnant with our son, and a month after I turned 16, I gave birth to him. 3 years later, his sister joined our family.
I threw myself into raising a family. Everything I did was for my children and my husband. My children were dressed to the nines, meanwhile I was wearing hand me downs from my extremely conservative mother (read long baggy denim dresses). As the years grew on, I grew wider, and wider, and wider...until my clothes began to feel so constricting I had trouble moving. I specifically remember the day I discovered Lane Bryant, I remember thinking WOW, I can finally dress the way I want and still be comfortable. I ditched the Mennonite style dresses and started to take the time to put some care into my appearance. I thought Lane Bryant was my salvation...in retrospect it was my demise. Before, I had to keep my weight in check in order to fit into normal sized clothes, but once I discovered plus size clothing, I could just buy a bigger size. No big deal... right? I was still curvy, I still had an hourglass shape so all was good... right?
That was about 15 years ago. Since then I have gone from wearing a size 14/16 to a 22/24. Every time I expressed concern about my weight, people would dismiss it and say they wished they had my curves, or that I wasn't that big...so my weight must still be ok...right?
One morning, a few years ago, I woke up and as I started to get out of bed I reached in front of me to grab the pillow I was spooning with...except I realized it wasn't a pillow...it was my stomach. At that point I knew things weren't "ok". I needed to lose weight. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life fat. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life uncomfortable. More than anything I wanted the "rest of my life".
I started focusing on weight loss and each time I would lose about 30 lbs then stall, and that stall would cause me to fall off track, then before I knew it I gained the weight back. Ultimately I decided surgery was best for me. My kids are grown now and they're both self sufficient, and I'm no longer with my husband...why not take the time now to focus on me? I'm just starting my 6 month supervised diet and I should be scheduled for surgery around July. I've chosen Dr MacColl as my surgeon so if anyone has experience with him please feel free to share any insight with me.
I'm excited to start this journey and I look forward to sharing it will you all.
