The beginning

This story begins at my birth, but there was a lot of nonsense for 20 years, literally, of me always being a fat kid. That's really all you need know. From 1988 to 2008, fat kid. I swam competitively for 10 of those years. Still a fat kid. I got slightly skinnier, but fat kid. And I'm ok with this. Really. It's part of who I am, and it's part of what has made me stronger and healthier today. I wouldn't be who I am without all the struggles that led of to it. Anyway, let's fast forward those 20 years to October of 2008.

It was homecoming week in undergrad. I was a junior. Naturally, I was going to participate in all ridiculous manner of activities. (Fun fact--completely sober for all events. I promise). One such activity was the Tug-of-War. Now, as a former swimmer, I did have residual muscles. Yes, they were buried under layer after layer of freshman 15 and sophomore spread, (there has to be a fun alliteration for junior year, but I have yet to hear it), but the muscles still existed. Swimmers' shoulders and thighs the size of tree trunks! So of course, armed with hubris and my team, I knew we were going to crush our competition. And we did! And something else that happened? I tore my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Yep. In a non-contact, hardly mobile event, I blew out my knee. I also happened to dislocate my patella (knee cap), slightly strain my medial collateral ligament (MCL), and build up a shit-ton of effusion (fluid in the joint). I'm so talented!

Fast forward again to January of 2009. Surgery! Exclamation point to emphasize the horribleness of it, not my excitement or joy. It was truly awful. Pain unlike anything I'd ever experienced. The actual injury hurt less than immediately post-op. I woke up crying, they gave me more pain meds. I woke up crying again, I was maxed out on pain meds. So I just laid there, crying, waiting to see my parents. Super fun times. And then the real work began! I had to learn how to use my entire leg all over again. In just 3 short weeks of true immobility, my muscles in the left leg atrophied an insane amount. I only had one thigh the size of a tree trunk! What is a girl to do?! Work at it. Very hard. Physical therapy was 6 months. I started out on crutches, non-weight bearing. Even got a handicapped parking decal! It was winter. My dr didn't want me falling. Eventually transitioned to weight bearing with crutches. Then crutch. Then just me hobbling around like an old lady, sans handicapped decal. Finally, I could walk normally!!

By this point, the already overweight junior in college was getting ready to become an even more overweight senior in college. I finished up PT right around the end of the school year. We had slowly gotten me back into running. Very slowly. I was lucking if I could run a mile in 14 minutes. But I was running! That year started and, in addition to completely losing my way as far as what to do after graduation, I also started to lose weight! My heaviest, me in the front in green, I was 250 pounds. Brutal. But a switch flipped. I was unhappy, unhealthy, and had already had one knee surgery. Something needed to change. And it did.