It Was the Day I Always Knew Would Come

It was a warm day in July, 2006 - my husband and I had just begun settling into our new home on the opposite side of the country. In the weeks prior, we had boxed up our whole lives, two cats and a dog and drove from coastal California to nearly-coastal North Carolina. The six-day trip was brutal, we drove through tornadoes in Texas and flooding in Arkansas and waited out closed freeways in Tennessee before we finally reached our destination.

As with a lot of people, my life had gotten away from me. I was working long stressful hours as a computer engineer and my husband, Ben, was a recent graduate student working as an investment banker and living four hours away in another city. So, when my husband was offered a position with a bank in North Carolina, he accepted and we were off to finally start our lives together.

Finally getting into a routine in our new home, Ben and I were out in the yard when I noticed him really checking me out.  I was slender when we go married, 5'7" - 139 lbs, and knew that I had let myself go a little but I wasn't prepared for what he said next, "Baby, you're looking a little moti."  My husband is from the Pakistan and "moti" means one thing - "chubby".  I couldn't believe my ears, he had always told my how beautiful I was and that I looked fine, even though we both new the pounds were creeping on. I ran into the house because I didn't want him to see me cry. 

He was right and I knew it, I was just in major denial. That day I did something that I hadn't done since before getting married, I got on the scale. In the three years that we were married, I had gained a whopping 47 lbs. I had ballooned from a slender and effortless size 6 to a size 14-16. That day  I decided that I was not only going to do something about it, I was going take charge and get back down to the weight I had been since graduating high school a decade earlier. 

To be continued...