Weight ~ Part One

Weight. This is a word that enters my vocabulary almost daily it seems. It's like a roller coaster...up, down, up, down. I have never been a tiny girl...I used to think I was big in high school because I didn't wear a size 0. But I look back on it now and I realize that I actually wasn't big at all...I was normal, healthy.
Healthy. Now that is what I want to portray to my daughter. I know that in this world, this society, she'll have to deal with the peer pressure to be "skinny." Look at what is portrayed...the tv, the magazines, everything. It all says that you have to be stick thin and wear a size 0 to be considered beautiful. It is really disturbing.
I want to be healthy. I want to be able to run around and chase her, I want to be able to keep up with her, I want to be able to play and not have to sound like I have been a two packs a day smoker my entire life (I have never smoked in my life).
This has been on my mind constantly. Even before I was pregnant with Aubrey. Back in Jan 2005 I started Weight Watchers. I was 24 years old, newly engaged, and ready to make a change. My first weigh in I weighed 204 lbs. I will never forget that feeling when I heard that. There was something about that 2. It was dreaded. I am only 5'6, so it showed. Weight Watchers worked for me. I enjoyed seeing that success every week. Seeing that scale go down was definitely a motivational factor. By June of 2005 I weighed 165 lbs. By September of 2005 when I purchased my wedding gown I was down to 150lbs. I got to purchase a size 10 gown...I was ecstatic. I maintained that weight through September of 2006.
Marriage put on some comfort weight. It was to be expected. Also my birth control pills were putting weight on me as well..which was on the label as a possible side effect. By January of 2008 I had probably put most of the weight I lost back on...I didn't know exactly the amount because by that time I had sworn off scales...didn't own one. We had decided at that point we were going to start trying to expand our family in June 2008, so I went off the pills in Jan 2008 and began charting. But the weight didn't come off.
It took us a while to become pregnant. In October of 2009 I weighed 206 lbs..this made me sick to my stomach because I had swore back in Jan 2005 I would never weigh 200 anything again. Then all the sudden my clothes (which were in the upper teens) weren't fitting. I had to buy a size I had never bought before...18/20. I knew then I had gained even more weight.
January 2009 I go to the doctor for my annual and lo and behold my weight was 236lbs! Holy crap!! I was so frustrated because at that point I felt like something was wrong. I hadn't changed my diet in any fashion, I was still getting moderate excercise, so I didn't know why the heck I had put on 30 lbs in 3 months??

Part Two...coming Monday.