When people talk about quality of life, they don’t tend to get into the details of what that means. For me, it meant not being able to climb stairs as easily as I liked. It meant not being able to run or play with my kids. But it also meant uglier and subtler things, such as how I got a rash in the skin folds around my waist or how I wondered if I was going to get so big that I would not be able to reliably wipe myself in the restroom.
Hi! My name is Nicole, and in May of 2015, I weighed 280 pounds.
I was a healthy weight most of my life, but when I look back on it, I can see that my weight did fluctuate throughout my childhood and teenage years. I was an active kid. I roller-bladed, I walked, I cycled. But I never played any team sports or participated in physically competitive activities. I never thought about my weight. And I never thought about nutrition. I never thought about what makes a body healthy at all. Still, as far as I can remember, I managed to get through my teen years without ever weighing more than 170, which is 6 pounds overweight, per the Body Mass Index (BMI) for my height.
The trouble came when I started hanging out with people who drove, and eventually started driving myself. As a young person without a car, you get plenty of exercise chasing down your friends and running off to concerts. Once a car is involved, fewer and fewer moments are spent physically moving. The next step in the weight battle was pregnancy. I had my first child when I was 19 and my weight just crept up and up after that.
I weighed around 180 after the birth of my child in 2002 so it took me roughly 13 years to gain 100 pounds. Now, that weight gain wasn’t consistent. In fact, I had gained the last 20 after I quit smoking in February of 2015. All the same, that means I gained just over 7 pounds a year, on average. I did not notice the weight gain. I did not weigh myself often and I paid little attention to the number when I visited the doctor’s office. This was something of a point of pride for me at the time because it meant I was eschewing societal expectations while also displaying strong self-esteem. And all of that is true in its way. However, that pride did blind me to the insidious nature of my weight gain.
For most people 7 pounds does little more than make their pants a little snugger. The difference between most people and me though is I did not get the message that I should pay attention to diet and exercise. The message I got? Time to buy bigger pants.
I have many thoughts about how and why I’ve gotten to where I’m at now and I plan to share them over the next several months. I think my story will help people who haven’t been in my situation as well as those who have. And maybe we’ll all increase our quality of life.
Me, accepting a Silver Key Award from my University in 2013.
Me, on a pick-your-own apples trip with my family in 2017