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| 3 months |
I mentioned my daughter once, briefly, a long time ago. I mentioned how worried I was because she weighed 230 pounds. She texted me on Sunday to let me know that she had weighed herself and now weighed 270 lbs. She said that it was the first time she had weighed herself in a long time, and the shock of the number made her cry. "I can't stop crying. I'm a hippo, mom, how did I ever let it get this bad?"
As many probably know, there are a lot of ways that one can "let it get that bad," and they all converged on my only daughter. She was raised by her father from age 12 to 19. He is a simple man who doesn't waste time on high-fallutin' things like nutrition. My daughter had gotten very big once before, around age 16, and so I had her come live with me for a year, since I'd always retained legal custody. I didn't make her exercise, and I didn't control her eating. It's just that we didn't have a lot of stuff around that was junk food. We don't keep it in the house.
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| Age 2 |
She was highly resistant to learning about nutrition. She was not an easy teenager. However, just living with us, that time in her teens, she lost 60 pounds in less than a year. Then she went back to Dallas to live with her father.
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| Age 3, with big brother Sweetface |
She has some sense. She never got into drugs, and she hasn't had any children yet, so at age 23, she's one up on me already. Her marriage right after high school was most likely based on the notion that, at 230 pounds, someone wanted to marry her, so she married, about three years ago. It quickly deteriorated into an abusive marriage. She tried once to move to another town, but the people she moved in with weren't incredibly reliable, and themselves became abusive, so she wound up going back to her husband to "try again".
The stress, I would imagine, was not conducive to a healthy lifestyle. My daughter told me some time back that the area in which they lived was not the kind of place where a woman walks alone, so she drove everywhere. That didn't help with the weight either.
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| Age 11: An impromptu family portrait taken in Dallas. |
I watched, from a distance, to try to ascertain when she was serious about leaving him. I had left an abusive marriage when I was 21. I went home to my parents temporarily to get back on my feet, and so now, is she.
It's jarring to realize that my only daughter, who is one inch shorter than me, weighs 120 lbs more than I do. She texted me and asked me if I would walk with her to help her lose weight. I texted her and told her that we were going to walk a lot when she got here. I figure that's the safest way to go until she's lost about 70 lbs. I told her to go to a running shoe store and get her gait analyzed for some well-cushioned road shoes, and if she couldn't afford a pair, to write down their suggestions.
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| 2009: Me at 170 lbs, herself at 230. |
Here, of course, she will walk with me, just a short distance at first, but then eventually longer. I have no illusions of turning her into an ultra runner. I'm just trying to help her avoid diabetes. In a few exchanges, I realize that she has no idea how to read food labels, so I'm investigating basic-level books on nutrition.
I plan to take pictures of her progress, but I don't know if I'll post them. Perhaps after a lot of progress has been made.
I plan to take pictures of her progress, but I don't know if I'll post them. Perhaps after a lot of progress has been made.
If anyone has suggestions for making this "project" easier, I welcome them.
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