I'm Not Obese, I'm Bacon Enhanced!

Well, I've been talking about doing a blog to follow my quest for a smaller bottom (and waist and arms and legs and...) for the last year.  Now that I am precisely 105 days away from my target, and no less large than I was a year ago I figure it's high time I get myself in gear and make myself accountable for losing enough poundage to look like Lara Croft.

So, to start off, let's take a look at where I'm at and how I got here.

Here I am today:

No, I'm not Master Chief... that's me on the left.  The one with the crazy face.  I was originally conceived in a scientific experiment that involved melding human skin with an LCD screen.  The results are really amazing, albeit a bit pixelated.  You'll be able to download your own LCD Skin app from Apple in 2025.

Note in the photo that I've accumulated what we like to call a "Bacon Enhanced" physique.  I tip the scales at very near 200 pounds.  196.8 to be exact.  It's hard for me to type that... but it's the truth.  Four years ago I weighed 50 pounds less than than I do now.  I hovered between 145 and 150 and was a size eight.  I started to say "was a happy size eight", but that isn't really true.

I've had weight issues all my life, which I blame primarily on my upbringing (sorry, mom and dad).  When I was 12 my uncle told me he was thinking about breaking up with his girlfriend because she weighed 120 pounds.  At 12 I was as tall as I am today, and I weighed 125 pounds.  Now, that single exchange isn't what has caused me to focus so squarely on what the scale says every morning.  No, there were many such comments made by almost all of my family members about my weight, their weight, and the weight of just about everyone around them.  So, it's been something that I've worried about all my life and I've struggled with both Anorexia in my teens (I weighed an average of 107 my Senior Year of high school) and Binge Eating throughout my Twenties.

But somehow, I was able to gain and maintain a steady weight of 145 - 150 for about three years and while I always wanted to be "just one pants size smaller" in reality I was super healthy with exercise and balanced eating both included in my daily habits.  

Sadly, I lost my ability to control my eating and keep an active lifestyle when I got an amazing opportunity to spend 4 years sitting at a desk for 10 hours a day with unlimited free fast food at my disposal.  I've learned a lot about myself and about business over the last 4 years, but "healthy" hasn't been a part of my vocabulary in quite some time.  Between the chili-cheese-burritos and mozzarella sticks, the thousands of hours spent slaving away in an office chair and the stress of meeting deadlines I lost the drive, energy and desire to focus on the scale.

So now I am a curvy size 18 instead of a svelte size 8.  Being classified by my doctor, my BMI and my Wii as "Obese" really sucks although truth be told I do enjoy being called "Curvy", "Voluptuous" and a "Big, Beautiful Woman".  But it's time for me to go back to some middle-size so I've set a goal for myself to drop to 160 pounds and a size 10 by September 3rd.  It's totally do-able if I stick to it (and I do need your help, dear reader to keep me on track), and now that I've kicked the desk-job to the curb and distanced myself as far as possible from the free fast food I know that it is something that I can maintain long-term too.

So I ask from you, reader of blogs, to please comment on my posts with your own weight loss frustrations and victories.  I will in turn start posting my thoughts and activities several times a week (I'm shooting for daily, but as I'm spending more and more time outdoors I forsee there may be a few days I don't make it online).  By helping each other we can all meet our goals, whether they are the last stubborn 5 or 105 pounds on our trek to healthiness.  Let's put down the bacon, and look forward to a thinner tomorrow!