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Did you ever look at pictures of yourself when you were very young, and wonder where all that joy went? This photo was one of my mom and dad's favorite pictures of me, because - as mom put it - "You were so happy back then." BACK THEN??? What happened to that little girl, I wondered many times over the years. How DID I become so lonely and introverted? How did I go from being a postive, happy child to feeling like I was a completely unworthy sub-species of the human race? Could it really be all downhill from the age of two????

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It was genetics, of course, at least to begin with. Lucky me, I was always taller and chubbier than all the kids my age. No matter where I went, my mom got the comment "Oh my - she's such a BIG girl!" Gee, that had to make mom feel great! And as much as I loved and adored my mother (she's passed away), I know that my "weight problem" was a big issue in her life, and so it naturally became the central issue of my life, too.

The other genetic thing that probably didn't help was that I was born with "knock knees" which required surgery when I was in kindergarten - leaving me in leg casts up to my hips for six months while everyone prayed that the bones healed straight. (They did.) However, before trying surgery, the doctors attempted to help my bones grow straight by giving me large doses of Vitamin D - a known appetite stimulant. Whether that really made a difference or not, I have no idea. But I do know that as far back as I can remember, I was always the "fat kid" in my own mind. And I'm sure that became just as important as any genetic pre-disposition. Looking back, there's no question that I fullfilled the image I had of myself. Even though that image wasn't always the reality.

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The teen years weren't any better for me - they were worse. I hit the genetic jackpot again, this time by being one of "those girls"- the ones who developed faster than everyone else. I'm not going to go into too much detail on this: those who've been there know exactly what I'm talking about, and those who haven't probably won't get it anyway. (You know if you don't get it when you're thinking, man I wish "I" wore that cup size.) All I have to say is that the whole experience made me hate and distrust my body even more than I already did. Not only did I feel "fat", but now I felt like a freak as well. I remember very clearly getting dressed-up for my first grade-school dance (a seventh grade western shin-dig, I believe), and feeling so proud of how I looked. But when I stepped out into the living room to show my parents, my poor dad just about fell over and said to mom (with a tone of obvious horror), "Oh my God, she looks sexy!"

Today, as a parent of a pre-teen girl, I understand EXACTLY what my dad was feeling. And I'm NOT blaming my parents for how overweight I ended up being because as you'll see I worked pretty hard at it myself. But I have been very careful NOT to do the same thing to my daughter. That's the kind of stuff that makes a girl (or boy) want hide under three layers of sweaters - and if you can't get sweaters, fat will do nicely, too.

By the time I graduated from Grammar School, I was wearing a woman's size 18.

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Yes, I do look great in the picture at left! Know why? Well, it should be obvious - Prince Charming (my now-husband Bob) had come and swept me off my feet! There was one thing I knew for sure back then: I HAD to lose weight, or I might lose Prince Charming as fast as I got him! So I spent one whole summer doing a "shake diet" and walking my brains out - and I managed to get down to the size you see here. But I have two things to say about that. First, when I wasn't walking or drinking shakes that summer, I was thinking about drinking shakes, or sleeping so I didn't have to think about drinking shakes. I was constantly thinking about when I could have the next one. In short, I was ADDICTED to those things, and no wonder, since they were mostly HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! YUK! Did the diet work? Oh yeah, it worked. I lost weight. But by the time I was ready to have my next liquid meal, I was literally trembling! I'm convinced that's why they call them SHAKES, by the way. The second thing I have to tell you is that, as happy as I was in that picture, I STILL saw myself as FAT. No one else was wearing a size 14 at the prom - or so I believed. And food was still the major issue of my life. Thinking about it, thinking about not thinking about it, thinking about how nice it would be if I didn't have to think about not thinking about it. On the surface, it all looked good. But it was only a matter of time...

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And so it happened. We got married, and left the nagging of our parents (Bob had spent a good portion of his teen years very overweight, too.) and the convenience of having our meals prepared for us, and rowed our little boat out into the ocean of married meal preparaton. The result being that all the self-image issues, and bad habits, and self-fullfilling prophecies came together to produce two very overweight newlyweds. It was just plain awful. We felt sick, moody and old. But it couldn't be the half pound of pasta we each ate several times a week, could it? Or the mac and cheese we ate on the other nights? Or the white rice we ate when we weren't eating pasta or mac and cheese??? NAAAWWWW.....

And besides, we're Italian, and that's what Italians eat, no?

And besides THAT, we were broke, and everyone knows that if you're short, you stock up on pasta and rice, right?

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Yes, that's us. It didn't take long, did it?

By the time this picture was taken, I had despaired of ever having children, since my GYN had warned me that getting pregnant at that weight would be downright dangerous. I was also having all sorts of woman's health issues, as well as spending an awful lot of time sleeping. But beyond that, I was absolutely, helplessly addicted to carbs. It really was like having "fallen down" and not being able to "get up". I would eat three bowls of sugar cereal for breakfast while thinking about lunch, then eat a whole box of macaroni and cheese for mid morning snack, then go to sleep in a stupor, only to wake up crying because there was no mac and cheese left for lunch! It was like living through one of those nightmares where you try frantically to call for help, but you can't get the words out of your mouth, so no one ever comes to help you. On and on it went, and down and down went my self-image. There was no doubt in my mind that I was the most horrible, depraved, undisciplined slob on the face of the earth. (Not that all overweight people are slobs! But I sure felt like one.)

Why Bob stuck with me through all this, I will never know. That man has loved me unconditionally since we got married in 1982, and that is probably the reason I'm still alive to day, all kidding aside. He literally saved my life with love. He believed that I could lose weight, and get pregnant, and eventually I did lose enough weight (by walking and eating meat and salad...) for my OB to clear me to get pregnant. We were blessed with our beautiful girl, and four years later with our wonderful son.

But still, try as I might, I could not get control of my eating. And back up my weight went.

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I'm making a joke about it, but that's only to disguise the fact that I HATED that sweater. It disgusted me. But it was the ONLY thing left that I felt comfortable in, because it was the only thing left that actually covered all of me. That picture is one of the last I allowed to be taken of me B.A. (Before Atkins). I was at least 265 lbs here. (Like many people, I didn't actually weigh before I started induction. I just couldn't deal with "THE NUMBER" yet. So though I use 265 as my official start weight becasue that's the weight I got when I actually did get the nerve to step onto the scale, I had already lost some weight before that.)

Not too long after this photo was taken (some time in 1999), our doctor wanted to get my husband's blood pressure down for some surgery he was scheduled to have. He wrote on his prescription pad, "ATKINS DIET". And as I've told elsewhere, that was the magic forumula I needed to FINALLY, at long last, get control of my eating and my cravings. It didn't happen overnight, and in fact I gained some weight back in late 2000 when my mom finally succumbed to the cancer she'd been fighting for three years. There's no magic bullet, and if you start using food as comfort, that's what will happen! But I was able to get back on track and lose what I'd re-gained, as well as more! And I'm not done yet.

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Here I am in February of 2004, at about 165 lbs. And no, I'm not a skinny little thing. I probably never will be. And I will admit that I agonized over doing this - showing all these photos and especially this one, because I'm not "there yet". But after thinking a lot about it, and talking to all my wonderful moderators, I decided that it was selfish to wait to share my story until I am at "goal weight". There might be people who could be helped by it now, and who I am to judge what will motivate someone else??? And gosh, I've lost 100lbs. If I can't say I've been somewhat successful with that, AT WHAT POINT CAN I SAY I'M SUCCESSFUL???

In the end, the IMPORTANT part about my story is not the weight I've lost. It's the fact that I'm not wasting my life away sitting around saying "When I lose the weight I'll...." Far too many years have passed me by while I was doing that, friends. I've re-claimed my life! I have a job to do, and now I'm free to do it.

And that's what has me so excited about this low carb lifestyle. Not that you can lose a lot of weight by following it, though you can. Not that people are getting healthier and fitter, though they are. It's the thought of how many lives will be "re-claimed"! Because in my mind, the WORST effect of the obesity epidemic is not the physical suffering or the financial cost, as great as those are. It's all the lives that are being lived in "quiet desperation", all the human beings who think that there is no way out, all the talent and compassion that is being washed away by glass after glass of sugary soda and buried under bowl after bowl of refined carbohydrates - THAT is what we have the potential to change.

The low carb lifestlye is no miracle, or magic bullet. Whatever "issues" you have to deal with still have to be dealt with. But this just might be the key you need to unlock your talents and give yourself to the world.

And that's what this website is all about. GO FOR IT!

Oh, and that little girl on the top of the slide? She's right here. And she can't wait to see what life is going to bring next!

Love Always, LCandrea

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