Like most women embarking on a new weight loss journey, Andie Mitchell believed her life would change when she finally reached her goal weight. She was absolutely right; her life did change. Only, it changed for the worst! In her memoir It Was Me All Along, Andie describes how she lost half her body weight, and in the process, nearly lost her mind!
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Andie admits she had never been a skinny child. She'd been binge eating for as long as she could remember. By the time she reached the 8th grade, Andie weighed 200 lbs. And when her 350-pound father died of a massive stroke when she was only 12 years old, young Andie packed on another 27 lbs. Despite doctors' warnings and two diet attempts, Andie continued to gain weight. That is, until she reached her rock bottom.
Andie's wakeup call came in the form of a delicious chocolate cake she'd baked for her 20th birthday. At first, she'd only intended to nibble on a tiny test slice. But one test slice led to another, and before she knew it, she'd devoured nearly the entire cake, save for one piece. It was at that point that she vowed to nix sweets and start exercising. She set a goal weight of 140 lbs, and relied on a mantra she read in O Magazine: "Can you do it today? Can you make it through today without binging?" She could. But it would be tough.
Eventually Andie pulled through. Over the course of the next several years, Andie lost an incredible 133 pounds, putting her five pounds UNDER her goal weight. Woot-woot, right? Nope. Despite having lost half her body weight, Andie said she'd never been less happy. Though she admits she enjoyed feeling "attractive and desirable and valuable in a way that [she] wasn't before," she also felt incredibly sad. "This was a very hard time for me," she writes. "Food is fun. Food makes up some of my best memories, and now I was changing my relationship to food and it changed my relationship with everyone else. It led to depression." It turned out, weight loss was just another side of the same "obsessive coin" as her overeating.
In a blog post shared on her popular blog, Canyoustayfordinner.com, Andie lists all the things she misses about her old life, such as eating brownies and cake with reckless abandon. But on the flip side, she also lists all the things she doesn't miss, such as the feeling of her thighs rubbing together, or the way people would stare at her and judge. It seemed, at least to Andie, she just could not win.
But ultimately, Andie did win. It's taken her 10 years, but Andie's finally found a weight where she feels comfortable. "I'm good here," Andie, who now weighs 150 lbs, tells the New York Post. "[This is] the weight where you don't have to struggle. It's when you don't have to turn down an Oreo."
I'm proud of Andie, and I hope to someday be able to follow in her footsteps. I was an overweight teen who then grew into an anorexic young adult. Though I've come to terms with my body and genuinely enjoy exercising and eating well, I still have yet to find that elusive happy medium where happy and healthy live side-by-side. However, knowing Andie's already found it gives me heart.
Images via canyoustayfordinner.com
