Timeline

In this photo I’m 11 years old (1987) and I’ve ventured to Europe by myself for a holiday with my family in Hungary. If I were to pin point where the perception of myself started to change it was after this trip. You see up until this time my nickname from my sister was “Skinny”…and after this trip my mother weighed me and I had put on 6kg…which I think is natural when you are travelling to another country.

I was no longer “skinny”…as I had put on soooo much weight. I distinctly remember being approached in the school yard by some younger kids and directly being asked if it was true that I had put on “that” much weight.

This next photo is taken shortly after this trip and it is a photo of my confirmation.

What do you see?

I see a little girl just starting to grow up, who looks healthy.

In the photo above I’m the one on the far right. I’m between 11 & 13 years old and it is taken at a Hungarian Scout camp. Throughout this time in my life I was constantly being compared to the two girls on my left, who were (as I was told) much skinnier than me.

Looking at this photo now I can’t see anything wrong with my size, but even at this age I was being told that I needed to loose weight and my personal truth was being rewritten.

I’ve cut out all the other girls from this next photo, but at this stage I’m about 14-15 years old and about a size 10 or 12 and in my mind I see myself as being fat.

I’m about 15-16 years old and performing Hungarian Folk dancing, by this age I had learnt how to put on a front and “perform”. I was happy for the camera’s and on the stage, but what my parents really don’t know is that I hated being on the stage. I felt so exposed, especially as I wasn't as thin as some of the other girls on our group.

This next photo is of my Debutant and I’m 16 years old, to prepare for this event my mother made me attend a gym everyday after school and would only feed me salada biscuits as I needed to loose weight. In this photo I think that I’m fat.

Fast forward to my Engagement party I’m 19 years old. Now if I didn’t cope being told that I needed to loose weight from my parents I was now getting it from my soon to be in-laws. I remember showing my mother in-law what I was planning on wearing to the party and she told me that I should not wear the vest or skirt as it made me look fat.

Can you see what she was saying? I sure can’t…

My wedding day (1996)…oh how I hated having photo’s taken off me. Can you believe that my wedding dress is a size 12? Yes that’s right as size 12…I see a young girl who has a little extra weight on her.

Fast froward 7 years to 2003 and I’m 26 years old and Tim and I are in Hungary on a 3 month vacation. After my wedding I really don’t have a lot of photo’s of myself as I think subconsciously I had made other peoples perception of my a reality and I had become the “fat” person.

This is another 2 years later and I think that this is where I’m the heaviest that I’ve ever been.

The last two photo’s are of me in 2006 and just April this year.

I recently had a candid discussion with a dear friend about my weight, you know the saying “Truth hurts”…well some truth was being said to me at the time that I didn’t want to hear. After I got married I piled on the weight and it was no one else fault but my own.

Sure I can easily blame my PCOS condition and the fact that my mother, father, sister and family all through out my childhood told me I was fat, of that I needed to loose some weight. Sure I can easily direct the blame elsewhere and keep my head in the sand, but I don’t want to do that anymore.

My brother and I saw Dr Phil live on Wednesday and there were some messages that really got to me. He spoke about a lot of things and I haven’t even begun to digest all the topics. The one thing though that really made me want to right this post was about Personal Truth.

If from a young age I was being told that I was fat and I was constantly put onto diets to loose weight, then I think that I became the person that I was told I was. I became that fat person, it didn’t matter if I was nice, kind, care, giving, honest and loving. I was TOLD from 11 years old that I was fat, which I didn’t believe.

So as I say I can blame others for that way I look now, but I won’t, sure my personal truth was rewritten by many different people. But I need to take responsibility for the way I look now (and dear friend you were right). I don’t know what this means for me now because I’ve been labelled as the fat girl for so much of my life.

What I want is to be known for the real person I am and not what I look like.