The Fat Truth.

I was always considered a pretty heavy set kid. I was taught to eat everything that was on my plate out of respect and not to waste food. Growing up living in and out of my grandparent's house, my diet consisted of what I like to refer to as "The 3 B's":

1. Bacon. (Seriously, whoever thought to fry up this part of a pig deserves some type of award in my book.) Eggs were cooked in the leftover grease every time the two coincided for breakfast. I was always banned from the kitchen when it was being fried or else my little sausage fingers were feeling around on the counter for pieces when my Grandma wasn't looking. 
2. Butter. And lots of it. I mean, I can't be the only kid who used to go in the fridge, scoop a handful of butter out of the tub and fist it into my mouth, right? 
3. Bologna. A fried (in butter, of course) bologna and cheese sandwich was where it was at. Add a little bit of mustard on toasted white bread and bam, breakfast, lunch or dinner.

I wasn't a very active child either, though I had always wanted to be, it just wasn't something I ever enjoyed doing. I wouldn't say my mother was "strict" but we weren't allowed to really run the neighborhood and play and ride our bikes here and there like everyone else. We were allowed a boundary of 5 houses to the right of ours and 5 houses to the left. I didn't have an abundance of friends, either. Play dates had to be scheduled with kids I went to private school with and those only happened every so often. There weren't really any kids to hang out with on my street until I turned 9.

I was always the fat friend in middle school and high school, and my friends were always thin, beautiful and full of personality. I mean, I had a killer personality, too, but I was a loudmouth not because I wanted to be funny, I had just wanted to draw attention to something other than my body. While my friends would try on clothes at the mall, I'd nonchalantly walk into the other room or pretend to have to go to the bathroom to save some myself from the embarrassment of not being able to fit into anything. I'd swoon over the "popular" boys who would turn me down or not give me a second look because of how heavy I was. If I had a dollar for every time I was told I had a pretty face, I'd be loaded. I had my first "real" boyfriend in the 8th grade. I didn't feel self conscious with him and he was honestly the first guy that made me feel beautiful and worthy of someone's time. Even after it had been years since we had dated and I was at my heaviest (that he had seen), he'd continue to tell me how great I looked. If there's a small chance that you ever stumble upon this, I can never thank you enough for being a real man.

My favorite is when people comment about your weight, but they think they're criticism is constructive or that they're paying you a compliment. When I graduated high school and was roughly 285lbs, I was having a hard time finding a job outside of working at a fast food joint. Since I wasn't planning on going to college right off the bat, my parents wanted me out of the house around 9am each weekday to go out and apply for as many jobs as I could until something came along. I remember being once told that people didn't want to hire someone who was obese because it showed employers that they didn't care about their appearance. That if they can't care about themselves, how are they going to be able to care about a job and handle its physical demands? Luckily I found one, but those words have stuck with me every single day since then and they've made me question everything I aspire to do. You become even more self conscious than you thought possible and slowly lose any small amount of confidence you might have had left.

There was a boy I met when I was 12 who I would swear up and down that I was going to marry. It was one of those things like out of a rom-com: girl sees cute boy, boy steals girl's hat and skates off with it, girl meets boy and falls head over heels, boy moves away but always comes home and things pick up right where they had left off. I remember the very first time he had kissed me. He was heading back out of state where he was living at the time with his father. I was walking him out of our garage door going over in my head how I was going to say goodbye without crying like a stupid idiot when he turned around and kissed me out of nowhere. If you would have asked me later that night if I saw fireworks, I would've said yes. And then I would've clocked you in the jaw if you would've told me otherwise.

Years passed and he finally decided to give our relationship a shot when I was 19. Everything was going perfectly for a little while. He was home for a few months for Christmas visiting his mother. He ended up meeting all of my family and we were inseparable. I would have bruises on my arms from pinching myself throughout the day because I had a hard time believing that after all those years, it was really happening. One night in the middle of January, we were sitting on my bed and I was staring at him, taking it all in. His blue eyes, curly blonde hair... was this really happening to me? It was snowing and we were looking out my window watching the soft white flakes quickly pile on my roof when he asked me if I had ever seen the movie Shallow Hal (you know, the one with Jack Black where he's a total dick and dates a 350lb woman but can only see the beautiful person she is on the inside). Of course I said that I had, not understanding where this conversation was headed until his words came out like bullets into my chest, "That's how I feel about you."

I was going throw up. I could feel the bile moving in my stomach and my face turn bright red. Hot tears rushed out of my eyes feeling cool on my flushed cheeks. How could I have been so stupid? How could anyone be with me and not pay attention to the size of my body? I kicked him out right then and there. I made him walk home in the blizzard and I didn't come out of my room for 3 days, except for work and at night to binge eat my feelings away. I felt worthless, miserable and most of all, I felt like I would never be capable of being loved by anyone. Oh, and if there's a chance that YOU happen to have stumbled upon this, fuck you.

It took a few years before I'd allow myself to take a chance on anyone else, and I thank God daily that I found my husband before having to date another fool. He's never once made me feel like I was less than perfect, and even when we have days when we're getting on one another's last nerve, he still tells me I'm beautiful. And there are moments that come where I second guess his compliments, trying to convince myself that he's only saying it because it's routine now, but I have to stop allowing myself to continue to knock myself down. He loved me at 276lbs before I had gotten pregnant with Milo. He told me how gorgeous I was after I had the baby and topped out at 315lbs last May, and he continues to tell me after I've lost 100 of those pounds.

The point is, one day when you stop obsessing about the way you look and your weight, everything is going to fall into place and you will find someone who loves you despite of the way you feel in your own skin. I love my stretch marks, I love the curves of my hips, my soft stomach and my olive skin. Start loving yourself. If you don't, you're never going to be able to let someone else.