For the longest time, I was physically fit. Well, not always fit. I gained weight here and there, but nothing major. I played sports religiously until the middle of high school. My sophomore year, I ran an entire mile in 6 minutes, 20 seconds.
I'm trying to say that I was healthy for a while.
There was never really a clear point where it started. There's no definitive "this is when I started to get fat" day, or week, or month. What I do know is that after college began, I gradually forgot about what I was eating. There just wasn't any time between studying, working, and life.
I started making excuses at some point, and I still catch myself doing it. "I worked hard today, so I'll reward myself". And I rewarded myself alright. With swiss cheese, with italian hoagies, with dollar menu burgers, with sprite and coffee and doritoes and sunchips and thin mints. I'll reward myself with a movie, and I'll work out later. I'll make up for it tomorrow with a salad for lunch. Oh, I ate a salad today. I get to reward myself with ice cream. Well, it's too cold to go outside today. I'll go outside when it's warmer. And then when it actually got warmer, it got too warm. "Oh, I'll get a gym membership sometime". And "sometime" never really happened.
This went on for a quick two years, through the winter and the summer, and the winter again. My grades were decent. I met a girl, and we dated for a bit. We broke up. My uncle died of liver failure. My aunt died of some sort of cancer. I met a new girl. We're still dating! We've been dating for a while now.
Life was happening, in moments of joy and sorrow. Frustration with homework. Anxiety and excitement with meeting new people. Making friends of roommates and failing to make roommates of friends. Meeting people in the E-sports community. In moments of joy and sorrow, life was happening, and food was always right there with it. Food becomes the answer to all of your problems, and I didn't even realize it was happening.
One day, some cafeteria person asked me what I wanted to eat. Somewhere in the conversation, she called me "big guy". If I didn't know better, I'd say she punched my in the face. She didn't say it hurtfully. She said it in the same way you'd say "man" or "dude" or something. Just a thing to refer to someone by.
And that's the day that I woke up. That's the day I realized that there was something wrong with my lifestyle. That's the day I realized most of my jeans didn't fit me, and the ones that did were far too tight. That's the day when I really started looking at myself in the mirror, and hating what I saw.
That's the day when I started feeling fat.