Samantha...The Facts

The picture at the top is from Christmas 2008. The picture on the bottom is one of my senior pictures, which was taken in 2001. I, unlike my sister, don't care to have my picture taken. Everyone sees and knows what I look like, so a picture doesn't make a difference to me. However, when I see myself in the picture I am disgusted. I don't FEEL like I weigh that much. Sure when I try to go up the stairs in my townhouse, ride a bike with my boys or even try to workout on my elliptical I get out of breath, my knees hurt within 1 minute, my arms and back ache, I get tired, and want to go lay down, but I used to not blame it on my weight. I would say, "Well, I smoke. I'm getting older. I had 2 kids. I'm just a sickly person. I have bad knees from gymnastics." I was in denial. But the truth is, I AM OVERWEIGHT! Actually, if u check my BMI, I am categorized as OBESE. I should not feel this exhausted from going up stairs, or riding a bike, or working out on an elliptical for just one minute at the age of 25! I was diagnosed with depression when I was only 14. I married my high school boyfriend at the age of only 17. He was 18. I only weighed 125lbs. Then I became pregnant 6 months after we married. I gained 50lbs with that pregnancy. After I had my first child I went back down to 150lbs for a few months but then slowly went to 190lbs. At this point people would always tell me that I did not look like I weighed that much and honestly, I didn't. And even 190lbs wasn't taking its toll on me as bad as my current 215lbs. When my son was 2 and a half he began to have seizures. We were in and out of the hospital and could not get them under control. I had no regard for myself at this time and then when we finally got his seizures under control, I became pregnant with our second child. I gained 30 lbs with my second son. I was at 220lbs and after the pregnancy of my second child and dealing with the seizures from my first child I finally had time to think about myself. It kind of slowly hit me. I felt awful, my medicine was not working very well for my depression anymore and when I finally admitted to myself how heavy I was I knew something had to be done. My children are junk food fanatics. They ask everyday if we can have one of the many many fast food places we have around here for at least one meal in the day EVERYDAY! I used to give in because we were usually always in a hurry at some point in the day and had a lot of things to do so we would end up at one of the grease pits. Then about a year after I had my second child my oldest started vomiting and having diarrhea. He was admitted to the hospital and in the end it was discovered that he had a slow moving duodenum, which is part of your intestine that digests your food. All that fast food was a lot of work for his duodenum to handle. The doctor said he needed to be limited to eating out to at most once a week. I realized then, not only was I hurting myself but my children too. We were unhealthy and I was making my children that way as well. I didn't want them to be a part of this new epidemic of obese children. We finally started eating better and I started trying to exercise more. Its going to be a rough road, but I became a member of a local church and was baptized on Christmas Eve two years ago, so I have faith (ironic) that I can do this if I really want to. I want to lose 85lbs to get to 130lbs, so here we go!....