This first blog entry is going to be a long one, so if anyone is reading this, be ready for a good read... but I'll give you a few photos to get you through.

I feel like I need to write this to give myself some perspective on where I am at. I am struggling with some serious self-esteem issues right now and have found myself returning to pre-weight loss mentalities and behaviours. I no longer accept compliments. When someone pays me a compliment I excuse it away - I think to myself that the person is saying it out of pity or to make me feel better not because they actually think I look nice or whatever. I find myself returning to self-destructive behaviours like saying "ah screw it" when I realize how many calories I have consumed and then I keep going. Or saying "I deserve it" when I go for a second helping of a dessert when I couldn't even afford the first one.

The worst and most scary thing I have found myself doing is emotional eating and hiding when I eat. By no means is this all the time and I have only caught myself doing it a few times, but it freaks me out. I haven't done this in over 2 years. It was an old habit from when I was a teenager that when I was putting the leftovers away, I would shove more food in my face while my mom was in the living room. An act of defiance maybe?

I have found myself doing this and also going and buying myself sweets and other high calorie foods and eating them before I get back to the office so no one will have seen me eating them.

I have found myself thinking about and scheming to eat things I shouldn't and ways that no one would discover what I am eating. Most of the time I do not follow it through... but it's scary that my mind is going there.

I did a LOT of hard work to lose the weight. 110 pounds in a year is actually a lot of weight and fairly quickly. In that year I gained a lot of new lifestyle habits, but the "addict" in me, I guess, never went away.

This is a picture of me a few months before I started to lose weight... this was the summer of 2009 - 3 years ago.



I am not ashamed of the woman in this picture. At the time I was quite happy - for the most part healthy, and I had a partner who loved me unconditionally. I had decided to lose weight for myself... I wanted to be mobile, to enjoy the freedom of movement and most importantly, to avoid the laundry list of chronic diseases my mother suffers from because of the excess weight she has carried her entire life. Of course there was a part of me that wanted to be thin for beauty reasons, but honestly (truly honestly) the first reasons were my biggest ones.

Through a lot of personal butt-kicking, I managed to lose the weight. This picture below is me in October 2010 - Super happy and feeling so incredibly proud of myself for how I had changed my life. I went from wearing a size 20 to a size 4/6. Amazing.



Then in 2011/12 I had some challenges... My new very active life meant that I opened myself to the risk of injuries... In the past year I have sprained my ankle so badly I was out for 10 weeks from any form of exercise. Later I had bruised my ribs which put me out for 3 weeks then almost right after, I bruised my tailbone which had me out for a month. In March this year I started having really terrible knee pain that put me out for 2-3 months and it's only been until recently that I have felt safe to run on it again.

Beyond this, my life has been incredibly busy. I am the social coordinator of an adult women's soccer league and I know how to throw a party... but that also means a lot of work. I also am a salsa dancer and since March I have been preparing for a performance in October that has taken quite a bit of my time.

I have also in the past year started a new relationship and so this has been a big priority for me and we are still working on how to balance our active lives, fitness, and getting enough time together.

And, as I said, I haven't been eating very well. I stopped tracking my calories a little over a year ago and like I said, I was doing ok for the first while. But when life hit and the injuries hit, I didn't adjust, I still kept eating the same. The pounds slowly crept back on.

When you look at the picture below (that's me from last weekend where I produced a charity fundraiser show) - your first reaction might be "you look gorgeous! you don't need to lose any weight" - I urge you, PLEASE DO NOT give me this advice, however well-meaning it is. I acknowledge that this is a great photo and it is MILES from the first one where I weighed 260 pounds. But it is now considered "overweight" and I do not feel healthy anymore. I know I am capable of being at and maintaining 155 and I felt more healthy and happy at that weight. I choose to strive for that.

I am back on track now, and will - over the next few weeks - talk a little bit more in my blog about how I got here and what I need to change.

And I am looking forward to it!