Advance warning pity post ahead........

There are 3 little words that I don't like to say aloud. I AM FAT. Not just fat, but according to the medical field I am morbidly obese. I am 30 yrs old and I am on hypertension medication and have been for about 5 years. I have a sickeningly sedentary life style and I am finding myself scarily close to 300 lbs.

I have never been someone who know what it is like to be slender or skinny. I have always been fat- from elementry school on. I grew up in a culture centered around food. Food based rewards, comfort foods when you are sad/down, snacking when bored or watching TV, and had it drilled into my head that I had to clean my plate at meal times. Part of my family (mom & brother included) had superfast metabolisms when they were young (till about 20), so they could eat what ever they wanted & didn't have to worry about gaining. I ate the same way with a much different result.

I have come to the realization that I no longer like seeing photos of myself. I think I am skinnier than I am and I HATE to see how I really look to others. This summer my cousin got married and I thought it was a success that I was only in 2 of about 300 photos of the wedding/reception. I found a really pretty dress, but when I saw photos of me I hated them. There was the devil on my shoulder whispering that it would have been even better if I wasn't in any of them. Holiday photos with family, I stand at the back of the group trying to hide as much of me as I can. If I can, I try and avoid having photos taken of me. We had a department picnic last week and to avoid having my picture taken, I turned around at the last minute. This is not a healthy frame of mind, I realize that, but I can't help it sometimes.

I have tried many diets, but I don't have the sticking power I need. I tried and had decent success with Atkins, but it was hard- I have a huge addiction to carbs & bread products..... guess why Atkins didn't work. I tried a diet last year called the Flat Belly Diet and did ok, as long as I followed the pre planned meals to the T..... not so hot for me.

It's not as if I don't know what things to do, what things to eat- I am a smart person, but smarts does not translate- with me anyway- into eating how I should.

While I eat breakfast everyday, it is usually buying breakfast on the way to the office from either McDonalds or DD. We don't have a cafe in the building that I work in, so I bring my lunch daily- not always the healthiest choices. Over the last year, I have done an insane amout of eating out- and not caring how bad the food was for me that I was ordering. I am making an effort to eat at home more, but I don't have all together healthy options in the house all the time. I sadly admit, I don't cook much from scratch- sometimes it seems too much at the end of a long day at work.

I have a few fitness DVD's, resistance bands, a stability ball, yoga mat, light dumbells (5lbs) and a deck of yoga moves.... but do I use them right now? NO. Right now a gym membership will not be in the cards.

I am really not sure where to go from here. Even though I would qualify for gastric surgury (omg) that is not an option for me.

Things HAVE to change, starting today. I am going to commit myself to first start recording everything I eat. I am going do my darndest to also calculate the calories and such of what I eat. Once I have a true picture of how bad it is, I will have a starting point and will start the process of reversing the damage that I have inflicted on myself.

End of the pity post.