Mara Schiavocampo - Thinspired: How I Lost 90 Pounds -- My Plan for Lasting Weight Loss and Self-Acceptance

Gallery Books
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Karen Hunter Publishing,
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Copyright 2014 by Mara Schiavocampo

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First Karen Hunter Publishing/Gallery Books hardcover edition December 2014

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-8405-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-8408-3 (ebook)

To my precious Nina Bella.
The day your life began, so too did mine.

Contents

Introduction

Imagine waking up one morning and being thin. Wait, lets back up a minute. First, imagine having a lifelong history of weight problems, dating back to childhood, spending decades agonizing over what to eat and how much you weigh, struggling like hell to lose even an ounce, and being ninety pounds overweight. Now imagine waking up one morning and being thin. Sound impossible? Well, it happened to me.

Okay, so it wasnt exactly like that, but I wanted to get your attention. What actually happened is that I started making small, incremental changes in my life, things that in some ways were almost imperceptible. Once I got used to one, Id make another. All the while, I went on about my life. I wasnt agonizing. I didnt spend every meal adding up a different set of numbers, from calories, to carbs, to points. I just lived.

Some of the changes involved food. Some involved exercise. Some had nothing to do with either one of those things, but contributed to my overall happiness. I spent a lot of time focusing on my happiness. How great is that?

Im not a completely clueless dope, so of course I noticed changes. My clothes started fitting better. Id step on the scale and go ooh, instead of ugh. When I would give myself a break and indulge in some of my old favorite snacks, theyd kind of make me nauseous, which is never the feeling you want from your comfort food. So, yes, I knew something was afoot. But I had no clue to what degree.

One day, I saw a photo of myself and thought, Whoa. Im thin. I was floored. I simply could not believe that girl was me. She wasnt thick or curvy, and definitely not plus-sized. She was thin. And her arms had like, some definition to them. When the hell did that happen? I thought to myself.

That night I looked through my closet and realized that almost everything was a size medium or 8, and much of it was too big. In the past, the smallest thing in my closet was a size 12 (not counting that one pair of aspirational skinny jeans from college tucked in the back). I was genuinely perplexed. If everything in my closet is a size 8, does that make me a size 8? I thought, scratching my head like a caveman. Wait . .. one... minute. If everything in my closet is too big at a size 8, does that make me a size 6?! Im slow, but eventually Ill get there.

Math has never been my strong suit, but these observations forced me to surrender. I started counting how many pounds Id lost. See, when I was stepping on the scale all those months, it mostly just triggered a trip down memory lane.

Oh, theres my pre-baby weight.

I havent seen this weight since college.

Now thats a new number! and so forth.

My goals were always in three- to five-pound increments, so I wasnt keeping track of a grand total. Now, faced with all of this mounting evidence of a huge weight loss, I had to add it up. I knew the general ballpark, more or less, but the final tally still shocked me: ninety pounds. Id lost ninety pounds. At first I thought Id done the math wrong, which for me is more than likely. But after several checks and rechecks, the number always came up the same. It felt unreal. So while its true that my journey didnt happen overnight, in a lot of ways the realization did.

Thats my story. Now lets get to you, because something tells me that if youre reading this book, you want to be accidentally thin, too. When I first lost the weight, several times a week Id get asked the same question: What are you doing?! Id get emails from viewers and old friends alike. Coworkers would stop me in the halls. At first, I really had to think hard about how to answer that question, because, like I mentioned, it all just kind of happened . But when I stopped to focus on what Id done and how Id done it, I realized that there was in fact a method to the madness, a formula if you will, that led me to the life that had eluded me for so long.

One bit of sober wisdom before we embark on this journey: While you may become aware of your progress overnight, like I did, this is most certainly not a quick fix. If thats what youre looking for, you may want to go and drink cabbage soup for a week. This is about a slow, gradual lifestyle change. Its not a sprint. Its a marathon. The good news is, if youre truly changing your lifestyle, you only have to do it once. Its been said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Its time to put that first foot forward.

Chapter I

MEMORY LANE

From the Beginning

All right, guys, get your violins out. My history with weight issues isnt exactly cheery. Ill start by saying this, though: I never feel sad or angry when I think of any of what Im about to share. I fully subscribe to the belief that everything Im not makes me everything I am. Its all part of what makes me, me.

Like so many kids who grew up in the 1980s, I spent Saturday mornings binge-watching cartoons. At the risk of sounding like an old grump, we didnt have it as easy as kids today. There were no cartoons on demand through YouTube, or twenty-four-hour cable channels like the Cartoon Network. None of that. You pretty much had one window for all of your prime kid shows, and it was Saturday morning. My siblings and I would wake up well before my parents, rush to the family room, and camp out under the TV for hours. It was about as good as it gets.

Unfortunately for me, those mornings were always bittersweet. Most weeks, at some point during our cartoon-a-thon, I would get called away. As soon as I heard my name being shouted from a neighboring room, my stomach would clench into knots. I wished I could run away and hide. I thought maybe if I ignored the call, it would go away. But that never worked. It was time for my weekly weigh-in.

As part of a family members loving but misguided attempt to help me shed baby fat, each week I was summoned to stand on the scale. Lets call this family member Aunt Shirley. Aunt Shirley firmly believed that a womanor young girl, for that matterwould never be happy if she was overweight, destined to be completely ostracized from society, like a modern-day leper.