The Journey from 2 to 8

I was originally going to call this post: Confessions of an Ex-Thigh-Gapper. But I thought that sounded a bit too mean to people the size I once was. In high school I ate terrifying amounts.

Moving on… Why am I writing this? I don’t know because weight is such a bizarre topic and I feel like the opinion of persons like myself are few and far between. Not that are views are especially important but eh, what are blogs for? A friend of mine posted this from Women’s Health on Facebook was what began the thought process about this post. I was glad to see number 3: Amanda because she never got huge but she got bigger. When I was in elementary school I was all elbows and knees, and short. Watch out, or I will murder you with my pointy chin. This one picture my arm just looks alien as I hug my cousin. I was about this age.

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I knew I was a nerdy and awkward kid but I was okay with it. I was a bizarre mix of being a bit of a tom boy while being utterly unathletic. I am sure that there was barely a muscle on my body until I started high school. I still stayed incredibly thin, but now I was doing theatre so there was at least some strength. I dressed in unisex t-shirts and baggy cargos. My few fitted shirts had a bit of goth flair. I wore the same tennis shoes everyday. I was that girl. I hated wearing shorts because my legs. They were so skinny, but I felt like they looked giant when I sat in shorts. I was very conscious of my shoulders and my hair.

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Even going in college I peaked at about 120 pounds. I am 5 feet 4 inches so especially when I was more fit that was still darn skinny. I think in college I started to blossom a bit more. I still think most photos of me are terrible, but even just out of high school I wore better clothes. I make terrible faces when I know my photo is being taken.

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In 2010 I started dating the Bear and if you ask him he will tell you that he felt like I was underweight. At that point I had been pursuing my Masters for a year, so my activity level had drastically dropped. These two were early in our dating.

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Since then I have been more and more sedentary. Sure we’ve played paintball but that is a here and there. I’ve never had to work out in my life. I’ve always been able to eat whatever I want but I really feel like it was hitting the age of 26 that everything really shifted. They tell you your metabolism will change but you never really believe them. I’ve been building a nice little gut. Keep in mind that paintball gear does not flatter women…

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Most of my weight has gone to my stomach, or at least the things I don’t like. That I guess is my real point. Most of it I don’t consider bad. I have a butt now. There is a skirt I bought in high school that I literally can’t get over my rump now. I don’t have a thigh gap, but that is because my thighs are proportional. My arms wobble a little bit, but they don’t look like toothpicks anymore. I just divided my closet by what I can currently wear and what I can’t. It made me cry because I like my clothes. I need to work on my stomach so I kept some things in case I can get to wearing them again, but I realize I might not. There should be no shame in not being a size two.  I think I’ll probably be at least a size six when I hit my ideal. And it is just my ideal because you can’t aim for a shape, biology will spite you, and aiming for a weight is just ridiculous usually. You change until you like where you are and then you try to stay around there. I suppose it would be easier if I could just stay this cute forever.

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It’s not that easy. Nothing is easy. My father spent a good portion of his life being unfairly picked on about his weight. My mother worries about her weight and my weight, but honestly I think we all do pretty darn good. Everyone struggles. I’m trying to learn to eat from my Mom. I’m trying to find time to exercise in a house where no one else has weight issues.  The important thing is that we have a blast. There are more important things in life than fitting into all of my clothes and being able to wear things from college.

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So what do you think? How do you deal?

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