one hundred fifty freaking six

That's how much my ass weighs.  In all fairness, my gut and thighs help contribute a little as well...but holy christ.  I've been battling my weight for what feels like forever.  And at first it was just minor skirmishes...I'd notice that my pants were tight and I'd watch what I ate for a couple weeks.  Then it got more intense: I'd notice that my gut was PISSED at being restrained by my pants & would attempt escape in the form of a muffin top, so I'd freaking QUIT EATING and run to the gym for the weeks that it took to get back into my size 4s. 
Then I had my breakdown and went on anti-depressants and went up to a size 6.  I bought new clothes instead of freaking out and deciding that I HAD to stay at 104 lbs and embraced my 115.  And I grew boobs, so I was ok with that.  Plus, being on the anti-suicide cocktail might have mitigated my "give a shit" a little bit.  I kept going to the gym because it was an excuse to get out of my house & away from my boyfriend, I kept going on walks because it was an excuse to get out of my house & away from my boyfriend...
Then I met Brad.  And Brad is an athlete.  And Brad enjoys food.  And Brad is a drinker. He can chow down on steak & baked potato with tons of butter & sour cream and chocolate cake because he's got this amazing metabolism and then he jumps on his bike and pedals a few hundred miles a week.  Jerk.  I, however, did not have metabolism or a training regimen on my side.  So I shot up from 115 to 120 before I even moved in with him.  Then I was at 130 seemingly before I could blink.
So I joined a gym.  And I was going a couple times a week, and then the fucking gym closed.  (It was one of those little indie gyms...I've never been a fan of the giant soulless mega-gyms) I looked around for ANYWHERE else that I felt I could go, and decided eff it, I'll just walk.  Well.  Our neighborhood has no sidewalks, has busted-ass streets (thank you very MUCH South Carolina), and in the summer it's 12000 degrees and in the winter it rains all the time.  So I bought some workout DVDs.  I tried riding a bike with Brad, but...well...that just didn't work. 
Meanwhile, on our day off together, we would go to brunch, go to dinner, guzzle a pitcher of mimosas, a bottle of wine, etc.  The weight was going nowhere.  And truth be told, I didn't look "bad" at 130, I was just kind of...loose...and my stomach was not making me feel pretty.  So I did sit-ups, I did pilates, stuff like that, and while I stayed in front of the weight GAIN, I couldn't seem to lose any weight.
 Then one day I hopped on the scale and in spite of discovering Yoga, in spite of hardly ever eating fast food, in spite of going on a mostly natural foods "diet" (we were trying to get pregnant at the time & I had chronic anovulation problems and when I DID randomly ovulate, I had PCOS, and my doctor told me that if I dropped 10 lbs, at least the PCOS might self-correct...and that eating ANY processed foods wasn't doing anybody any favors here...) that bitchwhore of a scale said 142lbs. 
So I lost my goddamn mind.  I quit eating all meat except for fish.  I started going to Yoga 4-5 times a week.  I did a 3-day juice fast. I quit drinking soda.  The only alcohol I drank was wine & only on Brad's day off and only with dinner.  After almost 2 years of attempting a pregnancy, we had decided to accept that it wasn't going to work, and we quit "trying" and that alleviated stress on me, which helped me not hoark down Zebra Cakes with a gusto (because Zebra Cakes and Taco Bell are my comfort foods, somehow...)
So when next I stepped on a scale, I was down to 134.  Which I was ok with, but I still wanted to get back down to closer to 120.  (By the way, I'm somewhere between 5'2" and 5'3")
I could fit into a size 8, which I wasn't REALLY ok with, but I could live with it, knowing that if I kept on plugging, I could get it down to a 6 again.  I even held onto my clothes KNOWING that I'd one day be able to put them on again without having to get out the pliers to zip up...
Then I got pregnant with Dylan.  Either the weight loss helped my PCOS, or the lack of stress hormone helped (anybody that's dealt with even the fringes of infertility knows that there are few things in this world more stressful than TRYING to get pregnant.  It's awful, even without hormone treatments and major medical intervention) and my hub decided he liked my size 8 ass, I guess...but in any case, I got knocked up.
Anyway, my weight gain wasn't too out of control with Dylan.  I was "allowed" to gain 25-30 lbs, and I got gestational diabetes, which made me REALLY watch my food in the 3rd trimester, and so when it was all said and done, the day I delivered I weighed 168 lbs.
I had pretty bad PPD for the first 2-3 months, then I was sort of ok.  But Brad was working, going to school and building a mountain bike trail and he was gone literally at least 16 hours a day 4 days a week.  Then on Sunday (his one day off without school) he'd be so freaked out that he would "have" to go ride his bike to "stay sane."  Which left me at home, alone, with a baby ALL THE FUCKING TIME.  And so here came the depression.
I couldn't get my weight below 146 no matter what I did...which admittedly wasn't much.  I didn't feel like I COULD do much.  Brad and I would try to work out a schedule...and then it would fall through, or he'd have an afternoon that I could go swim or or go do Yoga or whatever, and I'd realize that I hadn't hung out with him for literally WEEKS, and would choose to stay around him instead of going...because really, going to a 45 minute yoga practice one day every 3 weeks isn't really HELPING matters any, now is it??? And what would we do when together......WE'D FUCKING EAT.  We would go out to dinner, or make dinner and drink a bottle of wine.
My friend sent me her P90s DVDs.  I started trying them out.  Slowly at first, because...well...that shit hurts!  I quit eating red meat, I quit soda again, I occasionally walked Dylan around the block in a sling or in his stroller, whenever it wasn't 7000 degrees or raining.  I kept trying to do Yoga at home, but my center of gravity had so shifted from being pregnant that I couldn't do it without falling over...AND I had the only infant on the PLANET that refused to nap.  I could put him down for a nap and 15 minutes later he was awake and freaking out for attention. 
And I'm neurotic anyway, so add neurosis to "first mother syndrome" and you end up with a total inability to "tune out" cries for attention.  So it's super difficult to exercise with a squalling child in the room.  And once he got mobile, he'd get all up in my way...the day I kicked him while doing my kickboxing routine was the day I quit doing kickboxing. 
So I wasn't getting any smaller.  So I decided to do the P90x for real.  I started phasing out other meats and cheeses, quit drinking, and started doing the DVDs every day.  I'd settle Dylan in his bouncer and let him bounce for as long as he could stand it, and I'd work out to at least 30 minutes of the DVDs that way.
I'd gotten down to 145 when I got pregnant with Liam. 
Let me add that I'd only had 3 periods since giving birth to Dylan.  I was breastfeeding.  We were using other birth control.  It took two freaking years to get Dylan, and all it took was a celebratory spinach quesadilla & pitcher of margaritas in light of the fact that I'd finished my BA with a 3.25 GPA and ARE YOU KIDDING ME I was pregnant again.
And this time, as you can probably tell by reading my first few entries, I did not take it well.  I was sick as a dog this time around, I was petrified, I had some pretty major complications, and I had RAGING prenatal depression.  I was 182 lbs the day I delivered Liam.
And so here I am.  I tried to do P90x again, and I'd gotten through a week of it and I got sick.  I'm still breastfeeding 100% of the time, so I don't feel like I can quit meat again anytime soon.  Brad still works all the time, and is still riding his bike (admittedly not as much as he did a year ago, but still...) and even with help from my uncle, at my height of trying to work the fat off my ass, I was going swimming once a week and getting to exercise at home maybe one or two other days.
Then I joined the Myplate site which I've talked about before.
Then it seems like I spent FOREVER on the road for the last month...going up to Amyme's, going to Florence, and so I'd eat "road food" which is...duh...fast food. 
So the point is that I'm fucking DONE.  I'm done with being this weight.  And as much as I whine about it to Brad or Amyme or my uncle or whomever else, I'm still not DOING anything about it consistently enough for it to matter (obviously.)
This weekend Brad and I went to Atlanta.  We went to get some more of Dad's stuff, and Brad had a race in Columbia on the way.  I ate a pack of crackers at the race, then we went with Brad's daughter to Panera for lunch.  I had a half sandwich and a bowl of soup.  Those were the last halfway healthy decisions that I made for the next 2 days.  We ate Mexican food upon arrival at mom's.  We ate Chick fil A for lunch the next day.  We went to a Braves game (which they won) and drank crap-ass stadium beer and ate a hotdog that was as long as my fucking LEG and covered with cheese and chili. On the way back home, we ate at Arbys.  By the time we got home, we were both dying.  We felt like total shit. 
So I made a giant salad for dinner.  Leafy greens have never tasted so damn good.
So this morning, just for shits and giggles, I stepped on the scale.  And it blinked at me for a minute and it said "156."  And I cried.  Literally.
I can't keep doing this.  I have obese family members.  I have been fighting my ass for 10 years now.  I'm not going to fight it any more.  I'm going to WIN this fucking war.  I had gestational diabetes for BOTH of my pregnancies, which means that if I stay on this path, I'll probably get REAL diabetes before too long.  I'm not having it.  I don't want to be my kids' fat mom.  I don't want to be that fat girl that has to huff and puff to make it to Turner Field in time for the game to start.  I don't want my knees to hurt all the time.  I was looking at photos that I took from my Mom's house, and I (admittedly) was way too skinny for most of my life...I weighed 82 lbs at 5'2" when I left my abusive asshole dead-ex.  Those photos are painful to look at.  I was TOO skinny there.  The photos of me when I was still living in Florence after my dad died, I'd started to flesh out, but I still looked like a stick at 97 lbs.  I know that after 2 kids, the odds of me getting back down to 104 and a size 4 ass are slim to none, so I'm being realistic here.  I want to get back to between 120-130.  so that's around 30 pounds that I need to lose.
And now that I've said it out loud (or whatever it's called when you blog about something) maybe I'll stick with it.  Maybe I'll shame MYSELF into doing this the right way.

I don't know when I'll find time to do more than token exercises.  Having 2 kids so young is a total pain in my ass sometimes.  I know that I'll have days that I just don't fucking FEEL like baking chicken, and I'll have intense cravings for Dr. Pepper.  I know these things. But I've got to try and quit making excuses for why shit just "isn't working out."
Thus begins my journey.