I just now saw these. Sorry, I haven't been checking in regularly, as I'd like to.

Thank you so much for the advice. The important numbers are the ones other than on the scale--my glucose, my cholesterol level, and my blood pressure. As long as those numbers are doing well, what I weigh doesn't matter as much. To be completely honest, I suppose the only reason my body size bothers me as much as it does is that I am SO accustomed to being judged harshly for it.

And that harsh judgment was coming at me long before I actually was overweight. I matured early as a child. In third grade, I was closer in size and development to an average sixth-grader than to an average third-grader. Naturally I weighed more too, and everybody knew it because back then, scales were wheeled into the classroom, and heights and weights were recorded for school health records, right there in front of everybody. It's understandable that I was the heaviest kid in my class, and only the teacher weighed more, since I was also at least a head taller than everybody else except the teacher. This is including the boy who had been held back and was ten years old. I was taller and bigger than him too. But no, the "reason" I weighed more wasn't that I was taller and farther along than my classmates. The "reason" I weighed more was that I was a fat tub of lard.

By the time I was in sixth grade, I was within three inches of my complete adult height and had a fully functioning grown woman's body. I weighed what a healthy grown woman of the same height would weigh. But I thought I was hugely, grotesquely fat. Some of my classmates hadn't yet begun to sprout. They were still under five feet tall, with children's bodies, and as such, weighed far less than I did. I was taller now than even some of the teachers at school, so logically it stands to reason I would weigh more too. And I did, and no other explanation mattered except that I was, once again, a fat blob of lard. I wasn't alone in thinking this. Every kid, whether at school, in the neighborhood, or in the family, made jokes about how I'd better not sit down in some chair because I'd break it. Adults, even while assuring me I was not fat, gave me weight loss advice and asked me if I was sure I wanted that cookie, when they weren't questioning the other children. So, mixed messages from them.

It wasn't until the latter half of high school that I actually became clinically overweight, and not until after I gave birth to children did I enter the obese category. The thing is, when I look in the mirror, I see no difference. I have seen the same misshapen mass staring back at me, through all weight categories and all stages of body development including pregnancy, since I was eight years old. Logically I cannot possibly look the same, but what I see is unchanged. My mother-in-law told me that's what happens when a normal-sized girl grows up being told she's fat. If she gains weight later, she doesn't realize it, because that's what she thought she looked like all along. And of course, I also had other people telling me all along that I was fat, so when I did gain weight, I really didn't know the difference.

Taking the advice here, I will be sure and alternate cardio with strength training. As a part-time employee, I don't strength train on days that I work a shift. My job is active, it involves lifting and a lot of walking, and it's exercise enough in itself.