The Skinny on being... Well, Not So Skinny!

From my vast knowledge of overweight people (from watching "The Biggest Loser") it seems like there are two types of people that are overweight/obese in their adulthood:
1) They have always been overweight. Even pictures of them at 10 years old showed a chubby little kid who never "grew out of it". It seems like with a lot of those people, after highschool or college the weight just keeps piling on until they are in a state of "Oh my god!".
2) They were never overweight growing up and then at some point, teenage years, college, after having kids they end up packing on the pounds. Sometimes it happens after a traumatic event and it gets credited to emotional eating, sometimes it just seems like their lifestyles make it easy to overeat, not be active enough and then voila...

I personally fit into category 2. I was pretty skinny when I was growing up and because of all the problems I've had with my stomach since I was 8 or 9, I would lose weight when I'd get sick. Then in high school and college, I'd say I was prety average. I wasn't overweight at all, but definitely thought I'd like to be skinnier. Having said that, I don't remember any girls in high school who didn't want to be skinnier...
In 2002 I moved to England (where I met my now-husband) and without trying, or even really realizing it, I lost abotu 20 lbs. I was down to about 120lbs. I was working long days in a pub, running around all day and I didn't have a car so I had to walk everywhere. I can't say my eating was perfect (or close to it) but I do remember being broke enough that we weren't exactly eating out at fine restaurants on a regular basis.
Then I got sick again, and when I say sick... Wowza. My stomach got so bad that even a glass of water that was too cold would send me running for the restroom. Not a pretty picture. So, I lost more weight. I got down to about 115lbs before I stopped weighing myself. I was so sick and started to get so anxious about getting sick that it was about this time that I started getting panic attacks. I remember joking to a friend at the time back in Canada that I was the skinniest I'd ever been, but I felt too sick and was too nervous to go out and show it off.

After months of this, I finally got in to see a good Gastroenterologist who discovered part of the reason I was sick was I was on the entirely wrong medication and gave me some other things that were to help. Suddenly, I could eat. And eat I did! I would say I was still eating really healthy at the time (anything with fat in it freaked me out because it was so hard to digest) but I still managed to put on 30 lbs in about 2 months. I was still pretty happy because I was eating and not as sick and just assumed that because I had only been averaging about 400 calories a day prior to this, my body was just storing everything I ate until it realised we weren't in starvation mode anymore.
Unfortunately, it didn't stop there. I steadily put on more and more weight and started running out of excuses for why my body was storing all this fat... I was just getting fat.
I got sick again but this time, the weight didn't come off. It didn't seem to matter if I didn't eat, ate super healthy or ate all the crap in the world...I was still sick, and still fat.
That brings us to now. My eating habbits are definitely not good. I don't eat a lot of the really "big bad" foods, but I definitely don't eat frequently enough and I'm sure I'm not getting proper nutrition. I partly blame the lethargy of feeling sick and anxious on not better planning my meals and stocking my house with good food, but I plan to address all that over the next 50 weeks as well.
So here's the thing... I weigh more now that I ever have and I hope this is the most I ever weigh and I never am this big again. And it sucks. Having grown up thinner and putting on the weight fairly quickly has really brought to my attention how different my body feels:
My feet hurt. All the time. I've always had sore feet after standing all day and I could ever only last about 10 minutes in heels, but now it's a lot more extreme. If I go to the mall and walk around for an hour, my feet are in agony.
And the lack of cardio is a real pain in the ass... Like walking up three flights of stairs at work will leave me winded for a good 2 minutes. That's not good. Worse than that, if getting up off the couch seems like it's getting hard enough to do that you decided NOT to do whatever it is that getting up required... Not good. Not good at all.
Just being bigger all around is hard too... It makes doing really simple things like shaving your legs and painting your toenails more awkward. Not impossible, I'm not that far along, but enough that I notice more "in the way" than there should be.
Then of course there is clothes. When I was 140lbs and typically a size Medium, clothes shopping was still a pain in the ass. Finding a good pair of pants at any size is tricky. When you are a size 18, finding ANYTHING that doesn't look like you're either wearing a tent or busting at the seams is nearly impossible. Add to that the horrible pastels and patterns that designers put out there for "Plus Size" clothing... Yes, I might be bigger than some of the other women out there but I still want to look like I'm in my 20's... And it's still 2010. Why is that Plus Size clothes are still in the 90s?
Of course, those are just SOME of the physical challenges are being bigger. The other, and I'm sure the harder for some people, are the emotional/mental challenges. For a long time, because I had been thinner and had been out of the country for so long, I didn't even want to go out and let people see that I had ballooned out the way I had. I was embarassed to let even my friends see me at first, which can make you feel pretty crappy about yourself. Add to that a mother who has actually given you something called "Fat Blaster pills" as a gift and not so subtle hints about your weight and your self esteem takes a pretty good hit. On top of all of that, I'd be lying if I said my weight gain hasn't affected my relationship with my husband. He loves me, sure.. but he doesn't really want to jump my bones like he did when I was 130lbs. All of that just doesn't make a girl feel real special... And then when that makes me sad, it's even harder to get off my ass and do something about it.

To conclude... being fat sucks. It hurts, makes you feel bad and isn't healthy. It's hard, losing weight is hard and keeping weight you lose off is hard. Damnit, I'm in for a hell of a 50 weeks.