About Me

As a young child I really didn't have a problem with my weight. I ate like a normal child and I was active as a child was back then. About the age that my Mom would let me fix my own snack when I got home from school (10-11 years old) I started sneak eating. She always had ice cream in the freezer and when she would prepare our snacks she would give us two scoops. When I started being allowed to get my own it was a challenge as to how much I could cram into that bowl and her not notice it. There were times that she would have our favorite Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies baked and in the cookie jar and her rule was that we could have 3. I would always try and go and gently lift the lid and get a 4th one. Sometime I would get away with it and other times she would yell from the back of the house "Laura, get out of the cookies" How could she hear that good? Now I know it is a Mom thing! LOL!

There was only one time in my childhood that I remember someone saying something to me that really hurt my feelings. Tommy Harral screamed at me in his front yard "Fatty Fatty Two By Four Can't Get Through The Bathroom Door" I ran home crying. I remember my mother being really upset and her hugging me and telling me that Tommy was wrong that I wasn't fat and he was just being mean. To this day I remember it and I remember how bad it hurt. I never felt the same about Tommy Harral.

Junior High was pretty normal for me. I wanted to be in the band so I started taking the class and I also wanted to be a cheerleader but I just didn't have what it took. Back then on the Junior High level, the bands really did nothing more than march straight on the field, play some music and march straight off the field. It wasn't until High School that we learned how to march formations and the fun really began. I had lots of friends in Junior High and I don't remember anyone making fun of me but dang it, I remember making fun of some of the kids in school. Why are we as kids so mean? I thought that fat people were gross. Period. Gross!

By the time I entered High School I believe I was around 145 lbs. I'm 5' 8" tall so I carried it well. If High School did anything bad for me it let me have just that little bit more freedom that we all want by the time we walk through those doors. It meant friends driving so after football games there was Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and the local Whataburger. Mom and Dad just handed out the money and they no longer had control over what was I was putting in my mouth. I knew in High School that when I was out with my friends that I ate more than I would if my parents had been sitting there with me. I didn't care! I loved food. Eating a half of a large pizza was just no big deal. It was the first semester of my Junior year that I discovered that I was up to 165 lbs and I just freaked out. At the time a good friend was counting her calories and using Ayds, the tiny little candies that would suppress your appetite with a hot beverage. It became a game between us on who could eat the least amount of calories each day. I can remember figuring out how to keep my calories below 500 a day. Yes, you read that right...500 calories a day. How dumb was that???? My parents didn't even know what I was doing but they noticed that I sure did lose a chunk of weight pretty quick. You can bet with my Mother being the clothing buyer for the Sporting Goods store that she worked for and buying White Stagg and Jantzen I had some of the best, most beautiful clothes in the school. Of course this was before both clothing lines ended up at Wal-Mart. Their stuff was expensive and was wanted and because Mom could buy them at her cost plus 10% discount I hit the gold mine. I had really cute clothes and bathing suits for my new 128 lb body. I loved it. I pretty much maintained my weight the rest of the way through High School. It was college that things for me would really change.

Of course in college I didn't have the Band to keep me moving and in good shape so by hitting the library to work on my studies and meeting with friends with bags of M&M's and they passed the law that allowed 18 year olds to drink the weight started coming back on. By my 2nd semester in college I was back up to 145 lbs. At the end of that semester I was raped, my boyfriend moved to Houston, I packed my bags and followed him and learned a new freedom of living alone and really being able to do what I wanted. After the rape my weight steadily went up to 200 lbs by the time my boyfriend and I married. During the next year and 9 months of verbal, mental and physical abuse my weight went on up to the upper 270's. I got out of that marriage with not very much sanity left. Bad choices didn't end there. I had a bad relationship with a guy that I loved to pieces in High School and then I dated a guy that I worked with and found myself pregnant working two jobs and was left with the decision as to what to do about the baby. I've always regretted my decision to have a abortion but with therapy I have learned to forgive.

By the time I met my husband Mark my weight had zoomed up to 350 lbs yet after I met him I lost 50 lbs. You know it is that love thing! Shortly after we married I was back up to 350 lbs and Mark had put stability in my life and I could no longer rebel by trying to run from all my feelings. I hated it. In 1989 I was up to 387 lbs when I started Optifast and I'm telling you that diet about killed me. I was in the hospital 3 times with that diet. Come to find out there was something in the supplement that I was allergic to but with the help of the Dr.'s and staff I lost 87 lbs in 18 weeks using the emergency food list for that program. There was a long time before I could eat eggs again! LOL! After finishing the re-feeding phase of Optifast I worked with my dietician that was provided to me through the program privately. I was able to fool her and lie to myself all the way up to 468 lbs. It was also during this time that I went into therapy to deal with all that had happened in my life so far. It was after this therapy ended that I sought out to have gastric surgery (Molina's gastric segmentation or his banding method. This was long before the now popular lap-band). This was also before gastric by-pass surgery. They had methods of it out there but everyone who had it done died because there was no way to keep any nutrients in. I did not seek this surgery out on my own but it was recommended it to me by a Internist that tested me for every thing under the sun as to why I could not lose weight. If only I could have been honest back then. But it is what it is.

I lived with the Molina band for 13 years before I had the surgery reversed. I had taught and led the christian based weight loss program which turned into a full fledged cult and it is still going on. The founder of that program uses the diet program to launch people out of their churches into her church which is evil, brainwashing, does not teach God's truths and your staying in that church is by how much weight you can lose, because if you don't lose it you are sinning and you will go to hell.. This is my opinion, experience and understanding as to what Mark and I experienced in the short time that we were there. That experience almost caused me to take my life.

In late 2001 while we were in the cult I lost my hearing in my left ear and once we got out of it I started noticing that I was losing the hearing in my right ear. I got in pretty quickly to see a Rheumatologist who started me on Prednisone and she was able to get my hearing back and for what I didn't get back a hearing aid took care of. I lost my hearing 3 more times before I came to the decision to have the Molina band removed. I was also on Weight Watchers by this time and had lost about 75 lbs. I was sold out on Weight Watchers and was tired of trying to guess my points because I thew up so much with the band. After I had the band removed an started Remicade treatment for Crohn's disease my hearing has been stable. I truly think that the band had something to do with my immune system going wonky. I had no gastrointestinal issues prior to the band but they started immediately after the surgery. I'll have to write more on this experience in detail another day.

I continued on Weight Watchers from November 2004 until I quit in April 2012. Weight Watchers is a good program. The programs that they used prior to their Points Plus worked pretty well for me. Points Plus not so much. I have heard from many that they have the same feelings. I did lose 100 lbs twice on Weight Watchers old programs. I had asked my leader to coach me privately and trust me that was a disaster. Did he help? Yes, I learned a lot. I learned how to manipulate the points and I also learned a lot about myself. I know you are asking "What did you learn?"

I learned that until you fix what is eating you, you are never ever going to lose the weight. You will and can have success but you will not stay where you want to be. Feelings and emotions, past hurts and pains, lack of self-confidence, looking for a quick fix, ignoring what got you in the present and not understanding that YOU and I repeat YOU are the only one who is going to do the work to make the necessary changes to make a weight loss attempt successful. I have so many deep emotions and thoughts about all of this I feel like one day I will be able to write a book on it. Who knows maybe when I get to where I want to be I might do just that.