Beyond Willpower

Our wedding pictures are the first thing you see when you walk into our home.  Joey and I have been together for over 22 years. We've both gained and lost a lot of weight over the course of our relationship. Then we regained, and re-lost, you know how it goes. We got married on our 19 year anniversary, which is in March.  We had decided to get married just four months prior. So after what our friends teased was a 'brief 19 year courtship", we decided to just go ahead and do it. I know there are a million blogs and articles about losing weight for your wedding. This is not one of them. I had four months to lose weight. I don't really even remember what was going on, but I had NO desire to diet or attempt to lose weight and so I just...didn't. Joey lost a bit of weight so he could wear that fancy vest. I appreciate the effort, he looked handsome in it. :) We thought we would never get married. We didn't see the point, we kind of still don't, and luck...

So I just read this post  about 'letting it all hang out' in the summer, by Fluvia Lacerda, a Brazilian plus size model. She. Is. Gorgeous. First, let me say, my 'thinspiration' pics are always plus size models. I have no desire to be skinny. I want to ROCK my curves. Anyhow, this is what the lovely Fluvia Lacerda looks like: So she writes this blog post about how you should accept your fat body and don't care about the judgements from other people, etc, etc. I'm thinking to myself, she looks amazing, who is judging her? Then I google her and find a 'celebrity weight gain' site that is talking all kinds of smack on her 'chunky arms' and her 'expanding waistline'. I want to cry. Seriously. If you can look like THAT and still get insulted by these people (who are the equivilant to me, of frat boys yelling "fat bitch" at me from their porch) then I just hate this world.  I ASPIRE to be as 'fat' and 'chunky'...

So, I was talking to a girl at work today, and I realized just how far I've come from being young and stupid and full of self-hate. This girl, she's lovely. She's 22, 5'3 and weighs 120 lbs and is just so beautiful. She found out how much weight I'd lost and that I was very interested in nutrition, and she started begging, BEGGING for weight loss info. She said she wants to have a lower bmi, she wants to weigh 100 lbs, and that her legs are fatter than her bf's. She said she currently eats 400-900 calories a day. She asked if she should cut down to 300-600. She said "please help me!" I told her I would; I told her I'd bring her the number of a good therapist and advised her to get a fatter boyfriend, hehe. I was only half joking. ;)  I could not believe it. She laughed and I said, "I doubt I'm the first person who has told you that." and she said she used to 'see someone' for food issues and that if I gave her a number she...

So, I was reading a really interesting blog today over at  Escape from Obesity . She was asking what it is that keeps people going even when they aren't motivated. Anyhow, this was my reply, I thought I would share it here: -- I got to the point in my life where I realized that I want to be healthy more than I want to abuse myself with food. When I have slower losses, or am having a TOM craving, I just have to keep in mind that I've undone the progress I've made so many times over the years, and I am just at a place where I'm sick of it and not willing to let myself do that again.  Therapy has helped a lot. Blogging helps, I blog every day on spark, for accountability alone, and then I keep my beyondwillpower blog for the 'big things'.  When I ask myself what it is, it's just that I'm fed up. I'm 31 and still morbidly obese. This will only get more difficult the older I get. My real dad died at 47 from diabetes complications and he pretty much...

This got really long, I hope you guys can get through it! I had written this introductory blog about my weight loss history, my current journey, where I hope to be in the future, and my current accomplishments. One of my current accomplishments is that it is now February 5th and I have not binged since October 14th 2010. Someone asked how I managed to do that. Food addict, compulsive overeater, binge eater, yeah, I'm all of those. I have no doubt that this will always and forever be something I struggle with. I was reassured of that fact this week. I did not do any binging, although I can't say I wouldn't have had I had  more food at my disposal. At the end of the day I had most of my days calories left at dinner so since I had so many, and so did my bf, I asked if he wanted to go to mad mex. (local cal-mex restaurant). I'm going to lay out just what led to me being in a 'binge' frame of mind. I had eaten too little during the day and let myself get wa...

This post was inspired by a blog I read called  My Effortless Vegan Weight Loss  over at  www.vegansoapbox.com : It got me thinking about my motivations as far as veganism goes. I will say I am not a fan of PETA so with all of their outrageous efforts to convert people, I most likely would have converted sooner if not for them. Seeing this ad did not make me want to 'go veg', it pretty much just made me feel like shit and if I had seen it a few years ago I most likely would have gone and eaten a full order of wings to drown my big fat sorrows. Annoying PETA ad:  When I watched  Food, Inc  sometime last year, I started to get really aware of just how horrific modern agriculture (aka, big food) really is. The changes I made to my diet happened slowly over the course of 2009-2010. After I went vegan  I started buying as much local organic stuff as possible. Food, Inc trailer: So anyhow, I did originally go vegetarian in July 2009 for healt...