Disclaimer: I’ve gotten some comments on this blog post from people saying ‘but you’re not really so fat and even when you were fat, you weren’t that fat by today’s standards’. That’s true for the most part except for a few years here and there. But, my point is really more that I work hard all the time to fight my genetics and it’s always been that way. In every photo where I believe I look really healthy, it was because I was eating well and staying active. My daughter recently came home complaining that her friends eat chocolate and chips and pizza non-stop, but are all stick thin. She knows if she eats like that she will gain a lot of weight very quickly. She doesn’t think it’s fair. But, what I tell her is that even if it’s hard, it’s her health and it’s the most important thing to have if you want to live a long and fulfilling life. It doesn’t mean being skinny, it means taking care of yourself, feeling good about yourself and not limiting yourself from enjoying anything life has to offer.
Like a lot of women, I’ve had an up and down battle with weight most of my life. I usually fight the battle and I often win, but there are times when it gets the best of me and I lose. But, it’s worth it for me to keep on fighting. I’m not saying I’ve never been fit or happy with myself, but I’m saying that I have to work hard every day to get there and to stay there.
My mother told me that when I was a baby I had really fat legs. Not just fat baby legs, but super fat baby legs. Apparently, instead of making any effort to walk or crawl I would just scream at the top of my lungs until my older brother brought me what I wanted. That is my mom and me below in 1972 when I was just 1 year old. I didn’t start walking until 6 months later. My mother was already pregnant with her fourth child in this photo (crazy woman).
Mom holding Amy at 1 year old
Amy at 2 years old
I stayed somewhat chubby until I was around 4 or 5 and then got very thin. But, those were the days before internet, mobile phones and iPads. I spent most of my time outside playing and so I never had any weight issues until after childhood. Oh how I remember my Cookie Monster t-shirt.
Amy at 4 years old
Amy at 7 years old
Amy at 10 years old
Lucky for me, I can’t find so many photos of my awkward puberty years between 11 and 13. If I remember correctly, I destroyed most of them in my later teen years. But, as is normal during those years, I got chubby and frumpy until around 14 when I got a little bit taller and went back to being freakishly skinny.
Amy at 14 years old
Although I look like I have an eating disorder in this photo, I actually ate lots of food all the time. Not good food either. I ate at McDonald’s a lot. I sometimes would have a Snickers for lunch. I think it was just that I was very active at school and had a high metabolism at that age.
Amy at 16 years old
I don’t want to hear a peep about my hair. It was the late 80′s and my hair was some of the biggest and coolest hair in my high school. I’d spend a good 45 minutes in front of the mirror in the morning with my curling iron and Aqua Net. My hair would actually scrape against the roof of my car while I was driving. No joke.
Amy at 18 years old
Then came college. I started at Central Michigan University in 1990. Those days consisted of cheap beer, Mad Dog 20 20 and Boone’s Farm (3 for $5 bottles of wine). We had many a late night gourgefest at Taco Bell, Burger King or whatever was cheap and open at 3:00 AM. I gained the ‘freshman fifteen’ pretty rapidly and stayed somewhere around that weight until I graduated in 1994.
Amy around age 20
College graduation. Amy at 22 years old.
I had graduated in December and had just gotten engaged to be married. What the hell was I thinking? I was so freaking young. I had 6 months to get my body in shape for the wedding. I started hitting the gym in the morning, going to the beach for a swim in the afternoon and I was working nights at a bar – so I was on my feet all the time. 6 months later I had dropped 4 dress sizes and was in the best shape of my life.
Amy at 23 years old. Bachelorette Party.
My wedding dress that I bought before losing the weight had to be taken in from a size 14 to a size 6 just before the wedding.
Wedding day in 1995. 23 years old with my Dad. He’s barely making it down the aisle.
In Jamaica on my honeymoon and I was feeling like a million bucks. Nice hat, I know. In my mind, I had planned on keeping the same fitness level for the rest of my life and thought that I’d easily always look like that. Ha. Ha. Ha. The stupidity of youth.
A few years later and reality was setting in. I was working 2 jobs to pay the rent. I was trying to get my foot in the office door to get some much need experience for my resume, but the salary was low. I had to bartend at night to make ends meet. With all those bills to pay and all those hours I was working, I used my free time to sleep. The activity kept my weight reasonable, but my diet was suffering. I was always eating on the run and none of it was healthy. You can see the change in diet in my face and my skin. My eyes were puffy. My skin was sallow. I was tired beyond belief.
Amy at 25 years old.
After a few years of running full speed ahead I had finally gotten a job with a decent salary so I could quit the night jobs. I was breathing easier and things were starting to go better. I had even started back at a local gym a few nights a week to try and get some momentum back into a healthier lifestyle.
Oh shit. Oops. I ended up preggers instead. I had a really shitty pregnancy with nausea and vomiting that lasted for 6 months. I couldn’t move without spewing. It seems I suffered from a rare condition that causes my body to try and kill itself when pregnant. Awesome! I was a disaster. It was only in my last few months that I could eat again and then I started pigging out like mad, as you can see by Exhibit A below. People kept asking me if I was having twins. Nope, just one tiny girl doing jumping jacks in there. Oh and I know, my hair is super cute, right? WTF was I thinking?
Amy pregnant at 26 years old.
This one is a doozy. Just a few days after delivery. All that ‘stuff’ that accumulates all over when you’re growing a human being inside, well, it just sort of flops down around you like a spare tire and hangs out there for a few weeks. Supah Sexy!
1 week after delivery.
Most people who see me regularly now have never seen me when I was at my heaviest. The few years after my pregnancy were my ‘rock bottom’ in terms of my weight. I weighed around 165 lbs (74 k) during that time. I wasn’t happy with myself, but I was working, taking care of a toddler and taking care of my home. I never took any time for myself and I was so depressed about my eating habits that I just kept eating more. Pizza, pasta, beer, ice cream, cheeseburgers and chips. That’s me below taking my daughter out for a walk when she was around 2 years old. I was always wearing baggy t-shirts and loose clothes to try and hide my growing ‘apple’ fat. For good reasons, I have no revealing photos of those days to see what’s hiding under my boob tent.
There’s a Chinese phone book joke in their somewhere.
When Abby turned 3 years old, I moved to Europe and started working in Belgium. Over the next years I changed again drastically again and finally lost a lot of the extra weight from pregnancy. The ‘I just had a baby’ trick wasn’t working anymore when I’d have to explain my baby was over 3 years old.
In 2009 I hired a personal trainer and started training like I’ve never trained before. I worked really hard to get in shape to wear a Lara Croft costume for my annual Halloween party.
Over the last year I haven’t done much training, but I did give my diet a major transformation. I lost a lot of weight, but without the training, I became ‘skinny fat’. So now I have a smaller size, but it’s mostly fat and skin on bones. No muscle.
Skinny Fat 2012
I have to say I prefer my body with weight training than with just diet only. You can see the difference in my posture and well, you be the judge, but I just think it looks better. So now I’m going to do both and that’s my mission. Imagine the possibilities!
