About Me

My name is Jessica and I started this blog in December 2012 to be a video diary of my weight loss journey. I want to be able to look back and see where I began and how I meet my goals along the way.

My Story

I am 26 years old, and live in Regina, Saskatchewan. I have struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember. As a child in elementary school, I remember always feeling like the "big girl". When I look back at school pictures, I realize now that I was never really overweight, like I felt that I was. I was always the tallest girl in my class, and I have always been very broad, or "big boned". As I got closer to junior high, I was perhaps a little on the chubby side, but never as big as I always thought I was.

I have had food issues since I was very young. I can't say that I was ever a healthy eater. This would account for the chubby junior high girl that I became, but I was always very active, which I think really kept my weight in check. And then, I started high-school and that is when my life really changed. I was forced to quit the sports that I loved so much...volleyball, basketball, curling, bowling, because my knees became so painful and often swollen, that I couldn't partake in physical activity. It wouldn't be until years later, in my 20's, when I learned that I suffered from something called Chondromalacia Patellae, for which I have had two knee surgeries to date.

With the loss of the physical activities that I enjoyed so much, and the loss of the friendships I had made with my team-mates, I went into a depression and ate away my sorrows, finding solace only in food. And that is where my downward spiral really began. I packed on the weight, slowly creeping my way towards 200 lbs, then 220 lbs, then 240 lbs by the time I graduated high school. I started dieting around the age of 16, roughly 10 years ago, and since then, have become a constant yo-yo dieter. And as with so many others, I would be successful in loosing 20 to 30 lbs, only to gain back 40 or 50.

Today, I weigh in at 287.6 lbs, with my highest ever weight being 298 lbs. For the past couple years, I plateaued around 270 lbs, and after a few months of being on the right track and loosing 20 lbs, I finished school, moved to a new province for a new job, and went right back to my old ways. Not only did I gain back what I lost, but I inched ever closer to 300 lbs, and it terrified me.

I don't feel any heavier at 290 lbs than I did at 270 lbs. But I feel the weight in the change in my health. I have type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), and sinus tachycardia...just to name a few of my ailments. Naturally, the heavier I get, the more uncontrolled each of these conditions get. In turn, I feel every dingle day that I am slowly killing myself.

So now, begins a new chapter. I plan to get bariatric surgery to aide in my weight loss battle. While I know that some people don't agree that weight loss surgery is the answer, or feel that it is too extreme, I realize that unless I do something drastic, my health is only going to continue to deteriorate. I have been told by my previous nutritionist that if I keep eating the way that I eat, I will be dead by 30 years of age. That is something that no person wants to hear, and it was a real wake-up call. I have tried all the diets, I have worked with dieticians and nutritionists, personal trainers, counsellors. The one thing that all of these things cannot do for me is take away my insatiable hunger.

My hope is that bariatric surgery will work as a tool to remove that component of hunger, so that I can focus on make life-long lifestyle changes. I realize that it is not a cure-all. I will have to work just as hard to make those healthy changes so that I can lose all of the excess weight, and keep it off. But I am finally at the point, where I am willing to do whatever I need to do to get healthy. And so, my journey begins.