I have a secret.

Yes, I am about to share with you a very deep and personal secret. Are you sure you want to know my secret? Are you sure you can handle the truth? You can't handle the truth! Okay, here goes...I am a chronic over eater. That's right you heard me. I can't stop shoving food down my throat. I love everything about food. I love to cook it, bake it, smell it, look at it, and of course the most obvious: eat it. I'm driven by food so much so that even as I'm writing this, I had to get up to redirect the puppy and ended up redirecting myself to the kitchen for a snack. Mind you I just ate an entire box of mac & cheese an hour and a half ago. I can't stop thinking about food!

I've been chronically over weight the majority of my life. I began gaining weight around age 5, when my mom moved my sister and I from Reston, Va back to Kansas City, Mo where our family is from. I don't know if it was the stress of the move or that I felt the stress of my mother, but from that point forward I have never been unable to completely get my eating under control. It's so hard to say I've been obese for more than 2 decades. Although I can't exactly pinpoint why I first began to gain weight, I do know that I am definitely an emotional eater.

I eat when I'm bored, I eat when I'm depressed, I eat when I'm tired, and I eat when I'm anxious. I over indulge nearly every day. I cannot say no to food. My husband also has a love for food, but unlike myself, he can maintain a healthy weight. Just the other day he brought home a dozen donuts. I ended up eating over half the box in 24 hours. When I know the temptation is there, I'm drawn to it like a magnet. Another good example of this is at my work place. I work for a well known corporate childcare company, where food is abundant. There are crackers and goldfish aplenty. And I can't keep my paws off of it.

For as long as I can remember, I've been dieting. As a child, my mom did everything she could to help me. She even went as far as enrolling me in the Jenny Craig program at the ripe age of 9. I began yo-yo dieting in high school and it's been an up hill battle since then. The smallest size I've ever been was at the age of 16, when I stopped eating all together for a short period of time. Obviously that wasn't the healthiest choice, I was driven by low self esteem and the need to fit in.

I've started and stopped Weight Watchers more times than I can count.  I've committed to and abandoned countless workout regimens. As recent as last fall I tried to train for a 5k, which I subsequently gave up on during a vacation back east after 10 weeks of training. Last year Biggest Loser, one of my favorite shows, was doing auditions here in Portland. I talked to everybody from my boss to my husband about auditioning. Unfortunately, I allowed the majority of these people, with the exception of my husband, to talk me out of it under the pretense that I wasn't fat enough. Now I look at the women on the show and their average weight is very close to my own.

The bottom line: My weight has always been an uphill battle. No matter how hard I try, it's one step forward and 2 steps back.