I grew up in a very strict and religious family. My Mother was very careful about what we ate and when we ate it, and forced us to eat all kinds of strange vegetables we didn't want to eat. We were a big family, and money was tight, so we were always surprised with something different at the dinner table. My parents had to... improvise, sometimes. I developed strange food habits as a result of this. I had huge cravings for all kinds of foods that I just wasn't allowed to have. I was a slightly above average sized kid when I was growing up, but I was still pretty normal and I wasn't worried about it.

When I got a little older and had a job and a license, I had my ticket to eat whatever I wanted. I snuck out for treats all the time. I would tell my Mother I was going to mail a letter, or run some errands, or see a friend, and I would go out for junk food. I liked to go to sweet shops, bakeries, even the grocery store, just to get my favourite foods. That was the beginning of the problem, and it didn't go away. I started to gain weight, and I was a little chubby by the end of high school.

In college, things went from bad to worse. I moved away to another city, and I had no one watching me, no one to look out for my diet. Everyone has their thing... some people spend money on beer, some people buy a lot of cigarettes - I was buying food. I was buying and eating too much of it, but I couldn't help myself. The girls I was living with all knew I had a problem, but they didn't really want to talk to me about it, and I'm sure they didn't consider it a serious thing. How dangerous is food, anyways? I could have been on diets. But this was really bad for me, because I started gaining a lot of weight. After two years of college I had gained 40 pounds, and after the next two years I had gained 85 pounds. I was a mess, and I was spiraling out of control.

After college I really saw what I was doing to myself. I wanted a future, and I wanted to have children some day. But I wanted to be healthy enough to be up to the challenge. So I started dieting and exercising. First I started on whatever fad diets I could find, and they helped a little, but not very much. I always exercised though, and that helped to keep me from getting any bigger. I was still craving a lot of snacks though. A friend advised me to go on the Nutrisystem diet. That sounded like the first sensible idea in a long time. I really liked the diet because I could still eat all the satisfying stuff I like and lose weight at the same time. That really helped me deal with the junk food cravings. I started the Nutrisystem diet at 250 pounds - it's been about a year now, and I've lost 53 pounds. I'm very proud of the results. That's not just the diet, of course. I also began jogging for an houur every second morning before work. I've always been a morning person, so the waking up isn't a problem for me - plus I'm really refreshed by the time I get to work.