I can remember thinking about food differently than other people did from a very young age.
I was a latchkey kid, and there were plenty of afternoons when I came home to an empty house. Food became comfort. Something to look forward to. Something to do when I was alone.
And apparently, I was good at it.
I remember one time a relative brought homemade chocolate chip cookies. By the time my mom got home, I had eaten a LOT of them.
After that, she started counting treats.
I don’t say that to blame my mom. She was trying to manage something she didn’t understand. But I became very aware that the way I ate wasn’t considered normal.
So I adapted.
I’d break cookies in half. I’d hide what was missing. Eventually, when I had my own money, I just bought my own snacks.
Looking back, I can see something I couldn’t then:
I had already learned to eat in secret.
The women in my family were mostly small. My mom loved sweets and seemed able to eat without gaining weight. Aside from my step-grandmother, who struggled with obesity, I didn’t see many people around me dealing with food and weight the way I did.
By high school, food was one of the highlights of my life, but I was active enough that my weight hadn’t taken over yet.
I graduated at about 170 pounds on a 5’3” frame.
What people would probably call “thick” today.
Then a boy in my class told me I’d be hot if I just lost a little weight.
I’m sure he has no idea I still remember that sentence.
But I do.
Because somewhere along the way, I absorbed a message that attractiveness came with a condition:
I’d be pretty if I were smaller.
When Food Became More Than Food
At 18, I found out I was pregnant, got married, and moved to Hawaii.
That period was one of the healthiest of my life.
I was in love. Excited to become a mom. Living somewhere beautiful. Focused on a healthy pregnancy.
I gained almost no weight, and after my son was born I was nearly 40 pounds lighter than before.
We had one car and I wasn’t working, so I walked everywhere with him. Without trying, I was moving constantly and felt good.
Then I got a job.
Suddenly there were commutes, fast food stops, office potlucks, shared snacks, food in the car—food everywhere.
The weight came back quickly, plus more.
Then came pregnancy number two.
My husband was in the Navy and gone for six months. We moved to California where I knew no one. I had a new job, a sick child, and I was getting in trouble at work for missing time.
I was stressed. I was lonely. And food had always been there when I was lonely.
My sister-in-law came to stay with me. She was also an emotional eater, and we both loved sweets. Once a week we’d get pie from a local shop.
We looked forward to it.
We also ate a lot of takeout and fast food.
And I gained a lot of weight.
For the first time, I crossed 200 pounds.
My husband came home to a wife who was much larger—and much unhappier.
He never tried to make me feel bad. He still tells me he loves me and finds me beautiful.
But sometimes he’d mention things like how eating out so much could lead to weight gain.
And something in me would immediately push back.
Don’t tell me what I can eat.
I didn’t understand that reaction then.
Years later, therapy helped me see it.
Some part of me was still that little girl whose cookies were counted.
My mom had tried to control what I ate. Now I heard control everywhere.
And my response became:
Fine. I’ll eat whatever I want.
Food wasn’t just comfort anymore.
It was freedom.
“Maybe If I Were Happier…”
After our second baby, I was miserable.
I felt huge. I had no energy.
My husband was a 6’5” former college football player in great shape, and I would look at us and think:
Poor guy. Look at his fat wife.
No one was saying that. He certainly wasn’t. But I was.
I tried to change it.
I exercised at home. Tried walking. Went to the gym in bursts. Followed workout videos a neighbor recommended.
But I eventually had to face something I didn’t know how to fix:
My emotional eating was stronger than my exercise routine.
Two more pregnancies followed. My weight kept climbing.
I can’t pinpoint when 200 became 250 or 250 became 300.
I just know that by around 2008, when I started tracking with apps, I was already over 300 pounds.
For years, I hovered around 335–340.
My highest weight was about 360.
And getting below 300 felt nearly impossible.
What People Didn’t See
Living in a body that size affected everything.
My feet hurt constantly. I developed severe plantar fasciitis that sometimes made walking nearly impossible. My knees, back, and neck hurt too.
From about 2006 to 2014, I traveled constantly for work.
Flying at over 300 pounds wasn’t just uncomfortable.
It was awful.
I’ll never forget being called to the counter on a Southwest flight and told I needed to purchase an additional seat under their “passenger of size” policy, with possible reimbursement if the flight wasn’t full.
I was mortified. It wasn’t discreet. People were nearby. And because I was traveling for work, I immediately thought:
My employer is going to see this charge.
That’s what people don’t always understand.
Your body takes up space physically.
But it takes up even more space in your mind.
I tried hard to appear normal. People even told me I didn’t seem obese because I was confident.
And in some ways, I was.
But real confidence is complicated when your brain is constantly running calculations:
Will I fit? How far is the walk? Will my feet hurt? Is anyone watching me eat? What do I look like next to everyone else?
And underneath it all:
How am I going to lose this weight?
When food and body size dominate your thoughts, there isn’t much room left for peace.
I Was Always Trying
There’s a misconception that people with obesity aren’t trying.
I believed that about myself too.
But I was almost always trying something.
Weight Watchers. Fen-Phen. Phentermine. Exercise programs. A Biggest Loser program at my gym. Walking. Workout videos. Diet after diet.
Once I passed 300 pounds, I could usually lose about 30 pounds—then it would stop.
Eventually, I started to feel something new.
Hopelessness.
Maybe nothing would ever work.
The Anniversary Dinner
At the end of 2021, my husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary.
Our kids took us to a fancy dinner.
We ate a lot of incredible food.
And when I left, I felt sick.
I looked at my husband and said:
“I can’t keep living like this. Something has to change.”
So I started counting calories and moving more.
It worked.
Until it didn’t.
Then I tried keto.
It worked.
Until it didn’t.
Then intermittent fasting.
It worked.
Until it didn’t.
The pattern was always the same.
Progress, stall, restart.
At one point I got down to about 302 pounds and told a friend how close I was to seeing a “2” again.
She said, “That could still take weeks.”
I remember thinking:
No way.
A year later, I was still around 300.
I had lost about 60 pounds from my highest weight and kept it off.
That mattered.
But after years of effort, I still felt stuck.
Then my body gave me a wake-up call.
The Heart Attack
In November 2024, I had a heart attack.
Afterward, my cardiologist told me I needed regular cardiovascular exercise.
So in January 2025, I started walking again and adjusted my diet.
By May, my weight still wasn’t changing much.
I was still around 300 pounds.
Then, at a work conference, a colleague mentioned a friend doing well on a GLP-1 medication.
My immediate reaction was:
Absolutely not.
I had heard the stories—side effects, nausea, unknown long-term risks.
Not for me.
But she didn’t push. She just suggested I look into it.
That night in my hotel room, I did.
I found a Mel Robbins podcast featuring Dr. Rocio Salas-Whalen discussing GLP-1s.
Something about it made me pause.
I kept researching.
By the time I got home, I was willing to at least talk about it.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
My nurse practitioner is also a close friend.
She knows me. She knows my history. She knows my hesitation with medication.
So when I told her I was considering a GLP-1, she lit up.
She thought it could help.
We talked about risk versus reward.
Yes, there are risks. But there are risks to staying where I was too.
I had lived with severe obesity for years. I had already had a heart attack.
At some point, I had to consider what would happen if nothing changed.
I decided to try.
And then I cried.
I told my husband and my kids.
And I cried because part of me still felt like I had failed.
My sons are extremely health-focused. They wanted me healthy more than anything.
But I still heard a voice inside me saying:
You should have been able to do this yourself.
I was scared something would go wrong. Scared I’d feel awful. And maybe most of all:
Scared it wouldn’t work.
Because what if this was just another failure?
But underneath the fear was something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope.
What if it worked?
The First Shot
Insurance approval took about two weeks.
When I finally had the medication, I didn’t wait.
I took my first shot on a Friday.
The next day I went to a graduation party.
Food was everywhere.
Normally, my brain would have been tracking everything.
What’s here? What should I try? What about dessert?
But instead…
I just wasn’t that interested.
I had mild nausea, so I assumed that was why.
It took a couple of weeks to realize something bigger was happening.
I wasn’t thinking about food all day.
My hardest time had always been mid-morning to early afternoon while working from home.
I used to go to the fridge over and over.
Snack. Work. Think about food again. Repeat.
And then suddenly…
I wasn’t doing it.
I wasn’t resisting it.
I wasn’t using willpower.
I just wasn’t thinking about it.
At the time, I thought I had finally found the willpower I’d been missing.
I didn’t yet understand what was actually changing in my brain and body.
I didn’t understand food noise.
That understanding would come later.
But if I could sit beside that earlier version of me, I know what I would say:
It’s not entirely your fault.
Something in your body and brain is making this harder than you realize.
You are still responsible for your choices.
But struggling is not weakness.
And needing help is not failure.
When I took that first shot, I had no idea what would happen next.
I was terrified. I was hopeful.
And for the first time in decades…
food was getting quiet.
Next: What happened when I finally understood “food noise”—and how it changed everything I thought I knew about my life.
Joy in Progress 