In which I place the blame for my weight issues on everyone but myself

I was doomed to be fat from day one because I was born into a hyper-fanatical German family in which food was tightly controlled and firmly regulated from morning to night. I was only allowed to eat at prescribed times and when it was mealtime I was forced to eat everything on my plate. Way back then I developed a mentality I still have: eat when you can and all you can, and sneak your food if necessary, because the rules are too strict and you’ll never be able to comply successfully anyway.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

When I was a teenager I always “felt fat” because I had a pear-shaped, curvy (yet petite) body, unlike anything I saw in fashion magazines. Even as a relatively popular cheerleader and social butterfly, I never felt thin enough or pretty enough because the really popular girls were thinner and prettier. The social mandate demanded a body I simply didn’t have.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

When I was a healthy, young woman at a healthy, normal weight (though all the voices I cared about -- media, friends, even my own mother -- told me otherwise), engaged to a wonderful young man, I was ashamed to be looking at size 10 wedding dresses. Size 10 means fat, I told myself. And I knew that even my fiancé would have preferred I wore a smaller size. All those voices, all speaking so loudly at me, all telling me that I should be a smaller size.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Then came pregnancies and babies. Healthy pregnancies and very, very healthy babies. Even the twins were full-term, beautifully baked babies. But oh, the havoc they wreaked on my body! I gained 40 pounds with each singleton and upwards of 60 pounds with the twins. As perfect as my babies were, they ravaged my body and stole my “youthful figure” from me and I never got it back. How dare they?

Before I knew it, menopause was upon me and the fat cells celebrated by gathering around a whole new venue -- my waist. They’d become more stubborn, too, refusing to disappear no matter how I starved them. Where I’d always been able to drop 10 pounds easily (though keeping it off was another story), I now couldn’t even lost the weight without three times the effort it’d taken in my youth. The discouragement was just too much to bear.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Then, in January of this year, I fell and broke every bone in my ankle, leaving me sedentary, overworked, depressed, old, and literally falling apart. As a result, my weight sky-rocketed and I gained 15 pounds over just eight months --a good chunk of it after this photo was taken.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Right?

Wait.

Wrong.

Even if my weight gain over the years wasn’t entirely my fault (and of course it’s entirely my fault!), I’m still the one who has to live with it and it’s still my responsibility to do something about it.

So it’s time to stop the excuses and actually do something about it. Or at least take the very first step in that direction – which I did today. I finally joined Weight Watchers.

(Again.)

I finally took step one: taking full responsibility for both the problem and the solution. The goal seems huge and unattainable and I make no promises… except to go to bed tonight not feeling like a victim.