To truly know a story you need a beginning, middle, and eventually an end. My story begins when I was in 5th grade. It was the first time I realized things about myself. Being a kid who bought into the social importance of popularity, so much so that I tried everything I could to get people to like me. I was essentially the bear walking into a hunter's trap, as many bullies took advantage of the opportunity to make me feel less than human. However, like many kids I tried to soar above comments UNTIL the "fatboy" comments started. Being not good at sports, or not popular with the ladies is forgivable but being physically seperated from a majority of my peers isolated me and really began to shape my personal outlook of who I was through middle school and eventually high school. I was always a bigger guy, thick and sturdy. Infact my family always assumed I would be a high school football player but that is another story. Truth be told I was perhaps overweight but not dangerously overweight. However the constant torment of bullies, strangers (as I went to a huge school and never fully knew everyone), friends of mine, and even people I looked up to warped my thinking into believing the harsh words about my weight.
I was called EVERYTHING related to being fat, every insult or toxic mouth vomit you can imagine. So much so that I was afraid to change in the locker room, I never believed in myself enough to actually have any sort of dating history, and to combat the assaults I would poke fun at myself to deflect the pain it was causing. One particular moment I remember from middle school was a bully that pretended to be my friend but just used me as a human punching bag to get other people to like him. Every day for 4 years this guy would punch me in the same spot in my shoulder. The pain was not bad at first but as time went on my shoulder became more and more sensitive. I did not realize until a few years after high school when someone jokingly punched that spot on my shoulder and it was as if the damage from the years of punching caused a permanent wound under the skin. To this day I can feel the pain when someone punches that spot. Needless to say I tried to keep my outer shell strong despite the physical and emotional torment but below the surface I was very angry. Later in my high school years I would regret some of the choices I made when it came to lashing out at my parents and giving them a few years from hell.
Fast forward to after high school, I was never really a good student but I managed to graduate. I even met my wife in high school and we dated for 10 years before we were married in 2008. She always saw me for who I was on the inside and disregarded the obvious struggle I was going through with my self-vision of who I was. But lets go back to college, as this is where the damage was truthfully done. I was told very early on that my choice was college or military, naturally I chose college since I didn't see myself as much of a hero. Because of the years of believing I was so overweight, based on the bullying I received throughout my childhood...I began seeing myself as fat and would never see myself as anything else. Therefore despite being in the greatest shape in my life junior and senior year of high school I started eating anything and everything that wasn't good for me in college. I didn't care! I knew I'd never be able to be anything more than "the fat guy" so I fulfilled the vision I had for myself by eating LOTS of fast food and at some times even eating more than my body could handle.
Fast forward to today. I graduated college, married my wife, attempted to start a career, bought a house, and have ballooned to 423 pounds. I feel ashamed, broken, and at times depressed with what I let myself become. I looked back at a picture on my mother's fridge the other day of when I was in track and field (in high school) and didn't even recognize myself. "I was skinny then," I said to myself. "Hot even!" All those times my wife had told me that I wasn't fat, that I should ignore them...she was right. Now it doesn't matter. That was then and this is now. So in the past 5 or 6 years I've tried every diet, almost every method (including hypnosis) but I have failed myself. UNTIL the other day when my cousin asked if he could come over and talk with me about some information he has used to change his weight and eventually his life.
The journey begins...
