Confessions of a Fat Girl, Volume 1.

Okay--let me preface this by saying no, I am not fat as in, The Biggest Loser should recruit you and make an example out of you so no one else balloons to your level of obesity, but I have always, always, always, struggled with my weight.

It didn't become a noticeable struggle until maybe 4th grade. By 5th grade, I was "developing", a term that STILL makes me uncomfortable. I'm sure all girls (and boys, don't want to leave anybody out) once cringed at words like "puberty" but it was especially joyous for me because I went through it a good 2-3 years before everyone else. I wore size 8 jeans in 5th grade. I was not proportionate, I didn't get these huge boobs with a tiny waist, I was just big. I am still, by the way, waiting for my huge boobs and tiny waist. Any day now. I started my period at TEN, and didn't tell my mom, so I spent that whole week fashioning feminine products out of toilet paper. Suck it, Bear Grylls. And the cherry on top of that was this 4-foot nothing kid with a center part and feather bangs calling me "Whale" for the duration of the school year. Really? Whale? Is that the best you can do?

It wasn't quite so bad when the rest of my classmates pseudo-caught up to me in size. High school was more or less okay in that area too, and I even lost enough weight my junior year to consider myself pretty much okay-looking. College was a struggle. I dutifully gained my freshman 20 using a carefully devised method of eating giant slices of Pagliacci pizza for a snack between my 3 square meals a day which usually consisted of: A bagel for breakfast with a 280-Calorie Odwalla sugar bomb, a burrito for lunch, and a good 12 pounds of pasta for dinner, topped off with one of those Uncle Seth's Cookies--you know, with the pink cream cheese frosting? God I love those. I was a TEN MINUTE walk from a beautiful rec center, complete with three pools and state-of-the-art equipment. I set foot in there TWICE freshman year, and once was to accompany my skinny bitch roommate while she signed up for yoga.

I literally put on 20 pounds in three months, I jumped to the only natural conclusion: I MUST be pregnant! I was so horrified by the number on the scale that I would have preferred an unplanned pregnancy at 19 years of age to facing the fact that no, actually, I had just really let myself go. After three negative pregnancy tests, all of which I stared at, asking of them, "Are you suuuuuure?" I had to face facts. That was sort of a miserable period in my life, but I still couldn't get myself to work out and stop eating crap. One day my mom took me shopping, and I shit you not, I CRIED. In NORDSTROM. I guess you could call that a turning point.

By Junior year of college I was under control again. Even throughout half of senior year. As of, oh, last summer, things started getting a little rocky again. As of now, after the beautiful relationship with the beautiful man who stocked his home with beautiful food and still managed to appreciate my bloating body, I am at my second heaviest, ever.

So here's what I'm thinking. It's going to have to go on the blog. The struggle, the good and bad and ugly. If I take the time to write about it, maybe I'll start to find patterns in my effed up relationship with food. Maybe I'll be able to see the good I'm doing and/or NOT doing for myself. Don't worry, I'm not going to post daily with my calorie intake, but a sporadic series of updates should do nicely. For now, I'll leave you with the most terrifying confession of all: My height and weight. May it inspire you, disgust you, bore you, whatever:

Height: 5'1
Weight: As of yesterday, 149
BMI: 28.2

Healthy weight range for my height: 106-132.

Right.