A little History Lesson (with pictures!)

Good morning one and all!

I've decided for today I will give y'all a little background of me, my struggle with weight, why I feel I need banded, and how I got to be on the journey to lap-band.

I cannot remember not being overweight. I have one picture of me at about two or three with a little kid bikini and I think I look normal (to the left), but I have no memory of it only a picture to prove to myself that there was a time in my life when I was normal. When I was five, the summer before I started Kindergarten I was playing and broke my wrist and it grew back crooked, the doctor told my mom that I was going to be a chunky kid/ adult and that no one would ever notice so there would be no point in fixing it. My mom was furious and made him reset my arm, but anyways, I know by the time I was five I was already a bigger child.
I have an older half sister who is six years older than me, she is 5'2 and was about 130lb in high school (a.k.a. she was one of those petite biaches that I will never be), I on the other hand am 5'11 and have always been a head taller than everybody I know. I was about 8 when I could fit into my 14 year old sisters clothes and as a little girl who just wanted to be like my sister I felt very cool, my sister however explained to me that I was huge and that no 8 year should fit into a 14 year old's clothes. My next memory is probably around that time as well, I think I was somewhere around 9 o so when I told my mom I was 140lb and that I was just going to stay that weight as I grew up so I would not be fat. My mom was always dieting and watching what she was eating or 'cheating' with a bag of hershey's nuggets in her lap, so I knew all about dieting and how I probobly needed to go on one, I can even remember my saying Beth, do I have to put you on a diet, meaning she felt bad doing that to a child, but I was overweight.

I come from a small town and all of my family lives there. We are very close, my grandma had four girls, and all together there are 13 grandchildren, 6 of which are boys, so basically we are family of alot of women and we all try to boss each other around and give each other shit for things, but seriously we do love each other, just with a little of that catty girly stuff tucked in there. When I was growing up my mom and my 3 aunts were always hanging out with each other and all the cousins spent a whole lot of time playing with each other. A big thing in my family was 'the diet' my mom and my aunts were always starting a new diet or on a new diet or were getting together to go on walks or bike rides or something. We always were otrying to lose weight and since my mom was always the biggest of the four, she always got the most grief for her weight. Well it didn't take long before I got to join that bandwagon and soon I would here Beth, you shouldn't have icecream or Beth, why don't you have some fruit or carrots, and lets go for a walk. I went for a bike ride once with my aunt and she tried to take me up a huge hill, of which I was physically ready for and when I could not do it I threw a tantrum and was pissed at myself and her and never rode again. (Did I mention I am terribly competetive and it just pissed me off that someone could do something that I couldn't do). So that was the end of me trying to please anyone about my weight, I ate what I wanted and never went with them on family exercize outings and continued to gain wieght.

By the time I was in the 7th grade I was 180lbs. I knew I needed to lose weight, but I would try diets and fail miserably. There was some sort of mischievious need for me to flip off the system that truely enjoyed rebelling against my diet. (I am very much a rebel at heart, I have always done the opposite of what I am told and once I have made my mind up there is no stopping me, even on the most impulsive and disasterous desicions). SO I just got bigger and bigger amd bigger! My dad was a huge basketball star in high school and seeing as how I am a giant had always wanted me to play ball, but I was embarassed because I was big and out of shape, but I dad finally convinced me to join the team when I was in eighth grade. I loved it, it was a great experience and I did find myself in much better shape, but those litte skinny 8th grade girls did not forget that I was a robust 200 lb 5'8 girl who wasin there opions HUGE. I knew it and tried very hard to ignore just as I did every other time someone had been rude to me, until it got really ostentacious. We all made nicknames for each other and mine got to be BB or big beth as I knew but no one would accually say and they tried to lie about it all the time to me, but it was so hurtful to me that I tried to ignore it the entire year. Well soon everyone saw that I was decent basketball player with one minor problem, I am the most clumsy person in the entire state of Ohio. Especially at 14 when I am growing at ridiculous rates and I am not comfortable with it so I hade no balance. I fell the majority of practises and I fell alomost every game. In fact people started coming to watch our games to watch me fall. And with that came this little song "go BB go BB go!" it went and when I would fall or do something good the entire crowd would cheer it and I would get so0o0 embarrassed. All I wanted was to blend I didn't want anyone to look at my big, long fat body and I hated it that everyone knew I was big and that everyone was laughing at me. But in the spirit of me I kept my mouth shut and hurt on the inside trying to convince myself that these girls were in some strange way my friends.

So this continued through my freshmen year and then something fantastic happened. I found atkins and the YMCA. At 16 I was 260lb and could barely fit into my size 20 jeans and I was fed up. So I cut out the carbs like a mad women and the weight just melted off in a year I was down to 215 and felt so good, my fellow teamates no longer called me BB, just B and the older girls were always asking me how do you wieght now and I was really excited. The pic on the left was me at my lowest weight.

Well then I also figured out that boys were now attracted to me and that all the studying in the world was not going to get me and A in algebra 2 and that I needed to have some fun! So I did alot of rebelious fun and Ialso quit basketball because I was not fast and they wer not going to put me in varsitymy junior year and that was embarrassing so I quit! It took about a year, a group of very terrible eaters for friends (McDonald's, Mexican, and Applebees daily) and a job at dairy queen to bring me back to gaining weight. Well then I got a boyfriend and the drama continues, I started fighting with my friends and my boyfriend over who I should be spending my time with and it became a huge stressfull ordeal and the next thing I know I am starting colege at 160lbs again :(

My freshman year of colege was much like high school I fought and fough and fought with my best friends from home and was miserable and ate pizza and icecream from the dorms all the time. By winter quarter I knew I needed to escape so I signed up to study spanish for a quarter in Mexico. I ran away from my friends who I could never please, a boyfriend I didn't trust or love, but needed for validation and my 280lb body. In Mexico the family I stayed with made my meals, three meals a day and thats it, and I started waking up in the moring to go on walk/jogs, and I had no car so I would walk around the city for hours exploring via foot. When I returned I was at 235lb! To the top left is me fall quarter of my sophmore year after Mexico after jumping into mirror lake (if you a OSU fan you will understand if not its this crazy thing we all do in November for Michigan week, you drink, you jump, your freeeeezzzzeee!) I was elated, but all the problems that I left behing me were sadly still there waiting for me at home. I realized very quickly that I needed to seperate myself from all things from my hometown, so I moved early to an apartment near colege and just started working out and working on me. That year I tried very hard to work out and such, bu I just yo-yo between 220 and 250 pounds for most of the year, so by spring quarter I started seeing a personal trainer and again I lost the weight and was down to about 228lb, but then I started dating a man who loves to eat and loves to eat with me and even though I was still seeing my PT I was gaining weight! Th picture on the bottom left is me at spring break in Egpyt before I started seeing the PT. That was absolutely tramatixing for me. So I went into a depression and gave up on weightloss, I just couldn't lose weight obviously I had been trying for so many years and everytime I lost it I gained it right back.

I had decided to study abroad in spain as another runaway session this winter. My very small-town, scared of anything that not USA mother was then frantic trying anything and everything she could to keep me from spending 6 months in spain, she offered to pay my rent for three months, give me money, and then at a dinner meeting we have every few months we were talking about her friends daughter who had had lap-band a few months ago and how well she was doing and then she said I'll help pay for lap-band if you don't go. And she got me, it was like handing me one of those damn apples to Eve I took the bait and chomped right in. I could lose the weight for good and then any new trip I took for the rest of my life and every experience I wouldn't have I would no longer have to feel self-concious about my weight or know that the other person was thinking about how big I was. I was in from that moment on!

So there ya go that is how I made my way to become banded, it was this or spain, both equally adventerous experinces and I know that as much as spain would have been a fantastic experience I would have remembered for a lifetime, this is going to be an experience that will change my life!

Ohh and bty the was its day 5 I have lost 11 pounds on my fast and I have stuck to it to a tee!
Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!