My Real Weight Loss Journey to Lose 100 Pounds: The Day My Dress Didn’t Fit

Yesterday, I woke up and felt bloated. When I put my dress on, it felt unusually tight. Around the chest in particular, and the upper stomach too. I wanted to blame the washer and dryer, but I knew better.

I’ve been bigger. Much bigger. But I’ve also been smaller. Much smaller. Some say I should not be upset about my weight gain because I’m still a lot thinner than I was before my pregnancy, and while that is true, I know I have been this exact weight before, and it was too easy to get even bigger. Fast. And while my body is not suffering as much as it was at my biggest, I’m starting to hurt nonetheless. People can say what they want, but being less than my worst is not like being at my best.

Back then, it hurt to move. My back hurt, my shoulders hurt, my knees hurt, my neck hurt, and my feet hurt. My plantar fasciitis was so bad that if I was up for more than a few hours, even just sitting in a chair, I had to lie down and put my foot up on a pile of pillows to elevate it and help the swelling. Soon, that became both my feet. At the time, I was only 31 and I already needed to sleep with both legs propped up. Eventually, my arms started going to sleep, and my carpal tunnel in both arms went crazy. I’d wake up in pain every night. It hurt to live! Body and soul.

At my biggest, I was possibly a little shy of 400 pounds. I know for a fact I was 378 because that’s the weight I was when I stepped on the scale one day, and hating what I saw, I got off and didn’t get back on for almost a year. During that time, I kept eating, and I am sure I kept gaining. I’m sure the weight went up and down, but I will never know the true extent because I stopped caring and checking.

But not watching the numbers didn’t stop me from feeling the results. I felt uncomfortable in my clothes. They were too tight to wear and would hurt or bunch while I moved. It was to the point I wished I didn’t have to wear clothes at all. When I went shopping, I couldn’t find anything I liked on me, and what little I did sort of like didn’t fit or was way too expensive for me, or made me feel like I looked awful and bigger in it. I couldn’t even dress in a way that made me happy.

I didn’t fit anywhere I went, the seats and booths. And I felt like people were staring at me, judging me, whispering about me. People were often mean, and I was frequently overlooked or ignored. Salespeople didn't even want to help me. I can think of some incidents in particular, but I think I will share those in another article.

Beyond that, I was so lonely. I had just entered my 30s and hadn’t had a date in 10 years. I wanted to find true love, but I’d been sitting around waiting for the right guy to appear because everyone said the man who truly loves you will love you no matter what you look like. They would love the real you.

But I didn’t even know the real me. What clothes did I like? I based all my choices and styles on my weight. What was the best way to hide my weight? My stomach? My arms? My big butt and legs? I wore black because it was slimming. I wore a sweatshirt and pants to cover up. To blend in. I didn’t want people to have more reason to stare than they already did, which created my closet. Was it me?

And what about my hair? Jewelry? What did I like to do? But, like, outside and not involving food? I actually didn’t know. Was a true love supposed to randomly walk into my house one day and ask to marry me? Would every date be a dinner date?

I realize now that I had just been waiting for my knight in shining armor, like I didn’t need to do anything, like my dream guy was going to magically come and sweep me off my feet, even at my size, and be so in love with me that it would magically fix everything else wrong with me and with my life. My weight would melt away, the real me, whoever that was, would suddenly be revealed, I would be happy, and everything would be perfect.

I was so sure of it, but one day, crying in pain and sad and lonely in my bed, I felt so big and uncomfortable in my own skin that I felt trapped in it. Like I was in a costume I couldn’t escape, no matter how desperately I wanted to. I had been that way for a long time, but suddenly the happiness eating gave me was finally outweighed by the pain and sadness it caused. I wanted to take control of my life.

I got on the scale, and it was 375. It was not too far off from where I had been almost a year prior, but it was a hard number to swallow all the same. I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I’d heard about yet another diet book and told myself I’d give dieting one last chance. I picked up the book. Truthfully, it didn’t say much I didn’t already know. Maybe there was something about how the author wrote it, or perhaps it was because my resolve was finally strong enough, but, despite already knowing all the facts, I suddenly understood them in my heart. At least that’s the best way I can explain it. The same old facts, but they hit differently this time.

I’d gone on a million diets in the past and failed. I felt like I had tried so hard every time. But there was a piece missing from the puzzle that I couldn’t find for so long, until then. I don’t know exactly what it was, but somehow I stuck to the diet. I took accountability for myself. I found myself, and I lost the weight. I went from 375 to 139 in two years, losing 236 pounds. I did that. Not a magic spell or knight in armor. Me.

I found myself wearing the prettiest dresses. I was excited to go places and was always willing to do things. I always had the energy for anything and rarely worried about what others thought about me. It felt like I was meeting myself for the first time. I wasn’t wearing a costume anymore, the one I’d worn nonstop my whole life. I’d stepped out of it, and the world outside was bright, the air fresh, and my soul felt lighter. I loved it. When people looked at me, I knew they saw the real me inside.

I met my man and fell in love, and after a few years, we found out we were going to have a baby. And with the pregnancy came a 75-pound gain. After the baby came, I wanted to lose weight, but I was breastfeeding, and everyone said, “Oh, you lost almost 240 pounds before, so losing 75 will be easy,” so I didn’t worry about it.

Then, after my baby finished breastfeeding, I was about 215. I said I’d diet, but then there were holidays and life stresses and the baby had colds one after the other after putting her in day care, and then we took her out of day care, but I had to find an at-home way to make money, and that made me stressed, and before I knew it… it was yesterday.

Yesterday, I felt bloated, puffy, and slow. My joints were sore, and my dress wasn’t fitting right. I knew what the problem had to be, but I wasn’t ready emotionally. When I stepped on the scale, the number that lingered there broke me inside.

233.6

I’ve been bigger but I can’t help but be afraid. I’ve been here before, and getting from 230 to nearly 400 didn't take much. If it could happen after my first child, it can happen after my second.

Now my clothes don’t fit. I have a big box of clothes I feel like I can never wear again. I started having pains in my back, joints, feet…everywhere. I am wearing the costume again…

Somehow, along the way, I had lost myself. But it’s not like I got to this point without noticing. Since the moment I stopped breastfeeding, I have “dieted” and attempted to diet, but every time I lose weight, I eventually fall off the diet for one reason or another. I haven’t been able to make it stick.

Even though I have done it successfully before, I can’t find the drive I created for myself back then. And it was truly that. A drive. A determination. A spark that had switched in me. Dieting wasn’t easy, but something had changed in me that had made it doable. But how do you recreate a mysterious spark of determination?

According to Silveri et Al. (2024) studies show that a partner helps dieters stick to their goals. Overall, pairing their diet, and doctors’/nutritionists’ advice and guidance with a partner or community increases the chances of success, in some cases, by a considerable margin. In fact, one study noted that dieters blogging their weight-loss journey were not only more motivated to stick to their diet, but the more they blogged about it, the more weight they were likely to lose.

These partners are often called accountability partners because the dieter must have someone hold them accountable to increase their motivation. In other words, the partner makes the dieter face the outcomes of their choices and look at your results more critically than you usually would. It is sort of like a social punishment in your own mind.

I see reasons why that might be so. Nobody wants to fail, and if people know you're trying, then not making it, not trying your best, might make you feel a bit ashamed and almost definitely embarrassed, at least from your own perspective.

It makes sense, but these people are typically friends and family, your loved ones. There is so much empathy and sympathy there. It seems to me that these people care so much about each other, they are more likely to allow themselves and the other to slip up and take diet breaks, and say things like “it’s ok that you ate so much yesterday, you’ve been working so hard lately. We both have, let's have a no-diet day and go out to dinner.”

Eventually, neither of you will check in about the diet, and the accountability aspect is gone. You don’t have to face repercussions, so there’s no need to keep at it. But what if I were held accountable to people without reason to coddle me or let me off the hook to spare my feelings?

If my accountability partner is the entire internet, maybe some will be too strict and some respond with too much sympathy, but the average will be the perfect middle. I will need to take more accountability and responsibility for what I do and my weight loss results than if I were using my spouse, friend, or family member. The whole world could technically be checking in on me.

I know how easy it is to keep getting bigger, I need to find a way to create that old spark artificially. If I can’t naturally find the motivation within myself, I will force it by laying out my goals to the world, or whoever happens to read these articles, at least. Perhaps somewhere along the way, I’ll find whatever drive made my past diet easy to stick to.

Silveri, O. C., Gallardo, N. A., Chandy, R. J., Edwards-Hampton, S. A., & Feldman, S. (2024, November 11). Accountability frameworks in medical weight loss programs: A comprehensive literature review. *Cureus, 16*(11), e73474.

https://www.cureus.com/articles/307838-accountability-frameworks-in-medical-weight-loss-programs-a-comprehensive-literature-review#!/