the inner fat girl or the skinny bitch

oh she exists. In fact - she's usually around most of the time. She tells me things. Things like:

"Don't eat that Katie, do you know how many calories are in that chocolate cake?", or "What are you doing drinking that beer? You just ran 8 miles....now it's ruined!"

I hear it all the time. Unfortunately, I have gotten so good at ignoring the voices in the last year - that I am no where near where I want to be - body shape and weight wise (I say that with hesistation simply because as we all know - I don't use a scale). Numbers mean jack....and they make me go crazy....and obsessed. I don't want to be that way anymore.

I have been pretty disappointed with myself lately - slacking on my working out - my leg killing me from my running and not healing quickly enough to my liking. It's all around frustrating. I swear - underneath it all - I have this killer six pack on my abs and my legs are so toned that you can see the muscle definition from 50 feet away. But all I see whenever I look in the mirror is the same chubby girl from middle school.

I was a scrawny kid. I'm not gonna lie. I was. I had twiglike legs and the pixiest hair (is that a word?) - I was tiny - and I was active. So eating and food was never really a thing I paid attention to. I suppose it started when I was in middle school. A lot of things happened then too - my parents divorce - new school - sister and I fighting - the normal....but mom stopped making us dinner and so we had to fend for ourselves. Dinner was an "on your own" thing and since I was going to field hockey practice right to cheerleading practice or basketball or lacrosse - it just was easiest to get pizza or mcdonalds or anything that was fast. I don't know how I ate it all. I don't even think I remember eating a ton of it - but I definitely ate it. Pretty soon - my weight - from what I remember - shot up to about 140 as a 5'2" 8th grader. I was a chub. I was bigger than most of my friends and god love them for not being like, "we can't hang out with katie anymore - she's too chubby and she clearly will never get a boyfriend so she needs to be dropped". At the time - the thought never crossed my mind that I'd lose my friends because of my weight....and thankfully it's never come to that....but now that I'm older, I think of the things that could've happened.....

When I got high school - things changed. I continued to play field hockey - but picked up swim team. It was by far and away - the thing I was meant to do...and I truly believe - if I had started earlier and stuck with coaching year round - I would've undoubtedly been good enough for the olympics. I was pretty fast. But I digress....Freshman year started out ok. I was still a little overweight. The major difference though was that I "matured" - I dropped the baby weight and shot up four and a half inches. I dropped 20 pounds and was wearing size 2-4. It's probably the skinniest I had ever been (at least - up to that point in my life). I was swimming really well and got a lot of awards as a freshman on the team. I started to feel so good about myself. Just thinking I didn't have to worry about my weight again. It was awesome.

For the rest of high school - I slowly gained some of the weight back - to about 135 - which for someone of my height is pretty healthy - it dropped during swim season - obviously - but it wasn't until my senior year that I thought to run in the off season. I would run 6 miles almost every day. I MADE myself do it - and I got results. I didn't weigh myself but I could just tell from my clothes and the way they fit. I swam in the summer to prepare for college swim team and so I figured I'd be fine.

I got to college and still maintained the same weight through most of freshman year until swim season was over. Then...it was over. I gained about 15 pounds and got up to 148. I only remember that number because the next time I was weighed was at the doctors office just three months later and was down to 118. It was the lightest I had been - ever. I remember feeling so proud of myself and how amazing it felt to have that much control over everything.

While that's just a part of my journey - I still can't believe how much control it took for me to get that skinny. Most people think I still look the same but honestly - there is no way. I know it - I just don't feel or look the same. I don't know if I'll ever get back to a size 2 - but I can almost feel the 4. It's just going to take a lot of work. - A LOT of work.

I need to regain some sense of control. I guess that'll start with going to the gym tonight....

sometimes I wish it wasn't so hard.