What has being overweight prevented you from doing?

If you're like me, it has obstructed you mentally and physically.

When we started the challenge, I was 420 pounds. I could barely do day to day activities without being exhausted. Mom and Dad came down to Georgia to visit the week before we started the challenge - it was August and we went to the Villa Rica Gold Museum. The tour consists of walking through the woods to look at the old mines and solution tanks. Before we left the parking lot for the woods, I was in excrutiating pain. I couldn't make it up the hill. I went back to the car and let Mom, Dad, and Chris finish the walk. I was embarassed, ashamed, and most of all, ready to take action. I sat in the car for half an hour with the air conditioner blasting and I sobbed. I couldn't believe I had let myself get to this point - my food addiction was ruining my life.

I couldn't travel with my husband because I could not fit in a coach seat in an airplane and could barely fit in a first class seat, let alone the fact that a first class round trip ticket to Puerto Rico from Atlanta was $900. I was terrified of going places that I knew included lots of walking. I couldn't shop for clothes in a regular store. My feet grew two sizes to compensate for the weight I gained as an adult. I was depressed all the time. Even if I wanted to, it was impossible to show my husband my physical love for him.

Fast forward eight months and alot has changed but, alot has stayed the same. I have lost almost 140 pounds, or an Yvette. I'm working on fixing my head along with my body but some things are so ingrained that they are more difficult to reverse. I know that I am improving but I'm still big. I don't know this new Katie yet.

I don't recognize myself in pictures. I still, fleetingly, get immediately terrified when I know there will be lots of walking even though I have no problem doing it. I can't take a compliment - every time someone tells me that I look great, I can not respond quickly enough that I still have a long way to go. I can't see what everyone else sees in me. A friend recently asked for my help in planning a reunion. Right off the bat, I said yes. However, the more I thought about seeing the people I went to high school with, the more horrified I became by the idea. I could not bear to have people see me at more than 100 pounds heavier than I was in my senior year. I had to back out. I am still too embarassed by what I look like to go out in public.

When will these things change? What will the scale have to say? What size will I have to be? I don't think there's a good answer to these questions. Liking myself has always been a struggle for me and, realistically, I know that being thin will not make it happen. As a narcissistic culture, we define ourselves by the way we look and I definitely fall into that trap. I don't know how to stop being a victim of the mirror. I like to think that losing weight will help but that will only continue to make me a casualty of myself.

I have to come to terms with who I am and like myself at every weight.