Backstory (Part I of II)

CONTARY to what most people would expect, this story did not begin in a gym, weight room, or a locker room shower. Instead, it began in a room (my room,) where I would write down the muscle growth and body transformation stories that I had created in my head for amusement. I don’t remember what the first story was that I wrote, but I remember that it involved both food and muscle – which I suppose is only fitting since that is what this blog is about.

For the first five years of my life, I was a very skinny, very sickly child. I obviously didn’t have to restrict portions or worry about what I was eating as I did later on – I was just a very naturally picky eater. My mother worried that I wasn’t getting enough to eat and so she would sometimes force-feed me fattening portions of the things I liked: macaroni and cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, and so forth. However, despite her best efforts, I remained slim. Convinced that playing sports would make me eat more (since I would work up an appetite that way,) my parents sent me to a football camp for preteens – but because I was so thin, I didn’t have any power or momentum. At night, I used to fantasize about bulking up and gaining size and mass and putting everyone else I knew to shame. My parents wouldn’t let me lift weights yet out of fear that it would stunt my growth, and I yearned for the day when I would be old to enough to go to the gym. 

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I first started putting on fat when I was 11. We had just hired a new part-time housekeeper while my mother went back to work and she would make meals for me when I came home from school. She was quite the cook, and she had a knack for making all kinds of things that I liked to eat: fettucini alfred, ravioli made from scratch, and so forth. She was very generous with portion sizes as well, and if I requested that she make macaroni and cheese, she would make an entire box's worth of Velveeta Shells 'N Cheese and let me eat as much as I wished.

Initially, my parents encouraged my gains, thankful that I was finally "healthy." Eventually, however, my weight became a point of concern. By the time I was 13, I was 5'2 and nearly 140 pounds -- overweight. Most of my clothes no longer fit, and I was bullied and teased at school. Determined to lose the excess poundage, I decided to go on the first (of many) diets. 


TO BE CONTINUED.