mentally I felt healthy. My postpartum depression was gone and I was working out, dieting, and trying new things like smoothies and new exercises. Other than motherhood, weight loss was my number one focus, but you’d never have been able to tell that by looking at me.
I was technically “cured” of my postpartum depression, but the fact that I couldn’t lose a pound was starting to get to me. But I didn’t want to give up; nor did I want to get fatter either. I started to think about other options because I thought there was no hope. I was doing everything I could and not losing the weight. I was working out twice a day in 120 degree heat and hadn’t lost a pound yet. I didn’t know what to do.
So I tried throwing up my food, but bulimia just wasn’t my thing. I gagged myself with my fingers and the food came back up. I was desperate for something, anything, to work. At this point, nothing that anyone recommended actually did the job. So desperate times called for desperate measures. But I immediately thought, “Well, that was horrible and uncomfortable. This isn’t for me.” The thought of vomiting up my food made me even more nauseated than the actual act. I wanted to lose weight but not that badly. I forced myself to do it, but it’s not me; I’m not a person who was made to stick my finger down my throat, thank God. It actually made me sicker.
Then I considered surgery and lipo but figured that was a last resort. I was young; I shouldn’t have needed liposuction at this point. Sometimes you just stare at yourself in the mirror and think “Surgery could make this all go away.” But I was looking to try other options before getting to that. Something had to work! So I took diet pills and started to wear Spanx, but neither was working. The Spanx actually made me look (and feel) bigger, because in my head it was just an extra layer of material making me look even thicker. People would come up to me and say, “It’s okay, it’s only been three months.” That bugged me, but it bugged me even worse when they said, “It’s okay, it’s only been five months.” Meanwhile I would see pictures of Kourtney Kardashian in the magazines, and her body was already back to normal after a few months. I kept thinking, “What is wrong with me? Why can she do it and I can’t?” I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. We had kids three days apart and she was back to her pre-baby body while I hadn’t lost a pound.
It got to the point where I knew I was becoming a poster child for struggling to lose the weight when businesses wanted to hire me for their weight-loss campaigns. That meant I was still “fat,” because they wanted to portray me as the “before,” hoping I’d get to the “after.” They all submitted me proposals and gave me time limits by which I had to lose the weight! When I started to shed a few pounds there was a diet pill manufacturer that wanted me to work with them, and they wanted “before and after” pictures. So I took my “before” picture and sent it in, but they said I wasn’t fat enough in the photos! They wanted me even heavier. So this company actually told me to eat a ton of bread and whole bags of chips and drink a lot of soda and then take a picture so they could get their good “before” picture. I tried to look fat and I gave them a good “before” picture, but ultimately my team and their team thankfully figured out I wasn’t a good fit.
Diet pills, bulimia, plastic surgery—nothing seemed to be right for me. So when we were in Philadelphia I went to the gynecologist just to check things out, because at this point I just wanted to make sure I was healthy. I suspected and maybe even hoped that something else was going on so I would have an explanation for why I couldn’t lose weight despite my best efforts. So I went and got my blood drawn as part of the usual checkup.
I left the doctor and went to an interview for MTV’s When I Was 17. And during the
I was technically “cured” of my postpartum depression, but the fact that I couldn’t lose a pound was starting to get to me. But I didn’t want to give up; nor did I want to get fatter either. I started to think about other options because I thought there was no hope. I was doing everything I could and not losing the weight. I was working out twice a day in 120 degree heat and hadn’t lost a pound yet. I didn’t know what to do.
So I tried throwing up my food, but bulimia just wasn’t my thing. I gagged myself with my fingers and the food came back up. I was desperate for something, anything, to work. At this point, nothing that anyone recommended actually did the job. So desperate times called for desperate measures. But I immediately thought, “Well, that was horrible and uncomfortable. This isn’t for me.” The thought of vomiting up my food made me even more nauseated than the actual act. I wanted to lose weight but not that badly. I forced myself to do it, but it’s not me; I’m not a person who was made to stick my finger down my throat, thank God. It actually made me sicker.
Then I considered surgery and lipo but figured that was a last resort. I was young; I shouldn’t have needed liposuction at this point. Sometimes you just stare at yourself in the mirror and think “Surgery could make this all go away.” But I was looking to try other options before getting to that. Something had to work! So I took diet pills and started to wear Spanx, but neither was working. The Spanx actually made me look (and feel) bigger, because in my head it was just an extra layer of material making me look even thicker. People would come up to me and say, “It’s okay, it’s only been three months.” That bugged me, but it bugged me even worse when they said, “It’s okay, it’s only been five months.” Meanwhile I would see pictures of Kourtney Kardashian in the magazines, and her body was already back to normal after a few months. I kept thinking, “What is wrong with me? Why can she do it and I can’t?” I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. We had kids three days apart and she was back to her pre-baby body while I hadn’t lost a pound.
It got to the point where I knew I was becoming a poster child for struggling to lose the weight when businesses wanted to hire me for their weight-loss campaigns. That meant I was still “fat,” because they wanted to portray me as the “before,” hoping I’d get to the “after.” They all submitted me proposals and gave me time limits by which I had to lose the weight! When I started to shed a few pounds there was a diet pill manufacturer that wanted me to work with them, and they wanted “before and after” pictures. So I took my “before” picture and sent it in, but they said I wasn’t fat enough in the photos! They wanted me even heavier. So this company actually told me to eat a ton of bread and whole bags of chips and drink a lot of soda and then take a picture so they could get their good “before” picture. I tried to look fat and I gave them a good “before” picture, but ultimately my team and their team thankfully figured out I wasn’t a good fit.
Diet pills, bulimia, plastic surgery—nothing seemed to be right for me. So when we were in Philadelphia I went to the gynecologist just to check things out, because at this point I just wanted to make sure I was healthy. I suspected and maybe even hoped that something else was going on so I would have an explanation for why I couldn’t lose weight despite my best efforts. So I went and got my blood drawn as part of the usual checkup.
I left the doctor and went to an interview for MTV’s When I Was 17. And during the
Similar Books
