How I lost over 170 pounds in a year
Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007 7:00 AM by Jen Brown
Filed Under:
Joy Fit Club
My name is Mandy Muniz and I am 32 years old. This is the story of how I went from almost 300 pounds to 126 in just over a year.
Growing up, a great deal of family time was spent enjoying food. Saturday mornings were started with Dad’s homemade waffles with plenty of yummy butter and syrup or cream-filled and glazed donuts hot from the store. We often celebrated successes with food, such as hot fudge sundaes for good grades. As a family we did not eat fast food often but enjoyed the luxury of eating out at restaurants and getting appetizers and desserts with our entrees. I have always associated food with family, feeling good, socializing and comfort. I have seen food as a reward and a luxury to be enjoyed.
I have struggled with my weight most of my life but as I turned 25, I began to see my weight increase dramatically each year. I made excuses for the gains by saying that my focus on my career as a High School drama teacher was stressful and didn’t allow me time to eat right or exercise. When I got married I used the excuse of “newly wed and happy” as a reason for the weight gain.
My reality check came over a period of two years where my doctor, friends, family and even an assistant principal at my school pulled me aside to tell me how concerned they were about my health. Several of my co-workers had managed their weight through gastric bypass and had given me cards to their surgeons. They all commented that I was a bright, vibrant personality who did my job with excellent results and they were just concerned that I wasn’t taking time for myself. I was hurt by these interventions and refused to consider the issue. I even stopped going to my doctor because I knew he was going to tell me I needed to lose weight or, even worse, that I had a health problem. I chose to block it all out and just continue my lifestyle.
The weight, however, became increasingly hard to ignore. Our campus has three floors and if I needed to go to a meeting upstairs, I would climb the stairs and then find a place to hide while I caught my breath. I had painfully chaffed inner thighs from my thighs rubbing together when I walked. I constantly felt stressed and exhausted and really uninterested in socializing, choosing to go home and sleep instead. Still, I chose to believe that I did not have a problem.
One day I agreed to help a student with his independent film project. He was thrilled to have me act in the movie, and I was excited about the project until he brought a rough cut of my scene to show me. When the movie started to play, the shot came in on a woman’s arm. I remember thinking, “Who’s fat arm is that?” When the camera panned out, I was truly shocked to see that the arm was mine. I knew I was buying bigger clothes but I had lost all vision of what I really looked like. In that moment I had to come face to face with myself, not what I thought I looked like, but the real me: size 24, all 5 foot 5, 293.8 pounds.
Check back tomorrow to read about Mandy's weight-loss plan.
