Flashback

I called my doctor's office this morning because I was curious to find out when the last time I weighed anywhere near 222 pounds was. Would you believe it was when I went to my first prenatal visit while pregnant with Sean!!! He's 6 and a half years old now. In a way that was a bit depressing. I didn't realize it had been so long since I was anywhere near 200 lbs.

Basically what happened was I got pregnant with my daughter the month after I got married. When I got married I was at a healthy weight (although at the time I thought I was fat, go figure!). Unfortunately I ate way too much Ben & Jerry's during that pregnancy, and just didn't really pay much attention to my weight. It was during that pregnancy that my weight went over 200 for the first time in my life.

The closest I had ever come before was when I was a senior in high school. One day I was laying across my mom's bed looking at a magazine and my mother came in and told me my butt was getting big. To this day she swears she never did that! But she did and for some reason it was a real catalyst for change at that point in my life. After that conversation I got on the scale and was devastated to find it creeping a little past 180 (I don't remember the exact number now, that was 14 years ago).

I started getting up before school (at this point I don't even remember what time that would have been, before 6am I think) and walking. I cut most of the fat out of my diet. Low fat diets were all the rage then! But I wasn't actually following anyone else's plan. I was doing what worked for me. And over the course of my senior year in high school I lost 40 pounds.

In college I managed to keep most of it off. I would gain a little during the school year, but then lose it all and then some over the summer. The summer of 1995 was when I was at my lowest weight ever. I remember it being pretty awesome.

I remember something a little scary too. My sister, Katherine, has always been thin. One day that summer I was trying on a pair of her jean shorts that I loved. They fit. And they fit perfectly. I looked in the mirror and thought to myself, 'Maybe I'm not fat anymore.' It's amazing that at that point I still saw myself as fat when I so clearly wasn't.

Anyway, my goal is not to be that size again. After 3 kids I don't know if I could even be that shape again! Some close friends thought I had gotten a little too skinny. But anyway, my goal now is to learn to make healthy choices and get down to a healthy and maintainable weight. A weight that is nowhere near 200 pounds!

Oh, and another cool thing my nurse told me. When I went for my first prenatal visit while pregnant with Connor, early in 2006, I was 240. So I have now officially for the first time in my life, lost all extra weight associated with a pregnancy! Of course there's still plenty left over from the first 2, but I'm well below where I was with Connor. That was a real boost.

And that's all for my book-length post for right now.