I first started thinking about joining the military when I was a junior in high school. At the time I really wanted to join the Air Force. My dad had been in the Air Force, I had lived my whole life in the USAF and I liked it. But at the time I was very overweight, and had been for most of my life, so joining any branch of the military just seemed like a far away and impossible thing.
After I graduated from high school, I was still way too heavy to join and I didn't really want to get a job and even though I didn't really want to go to college I enrolled at the local junior college and decided to major in biological science, another long time love of mine. School went ok, it was like grade 13 and I made lots of friends, hated studying and doing homework and loved partying and doing all that fun college stuff. But I still had that nagging feeling that stayed just far enough away that I didn't have to address it, but it never left either. To make matters worse, during this same time period both my brothers joined the USMC, a year apart from each other, and I went to both their Basic Training graduations so every time my nag seemed to be tucked nicely away, the scab would get ripped off and I'd remember it again. That combined with all the new and different Marine Corps stuff I had been newly introduced to made the Marines very attractive to me, so..
So I somehow convinced my then roomie that we could both join the Marines and we both started going to visit the recruiter. At first it was highly motivating, but then as time passed, he gave us some terrible advice on dieting and weight loss and even though we both gave it a decent try we soon realized that the Marines were not where we wanted to go.
When we first stepped into his office he seemed very enthused and had us both believing we could shed that weight in no time and would be off on our way. That first time on his scale it read 215lbs. He then told us to starve ourselves and to not eat anything all week, just drink liquids. So that is what we did and what do you know, one week later we had both lost 10 pounds. So we kept it up as long as we could, but anybody can tell that a diet like that can't be maintained and so we ultimately failed. He also went out of his way at the same time to tell us that most Marines don't think that women should even be in the corps and was very negative himself about female Marines, so after a steady diet of that we both decided to give it up and ended up no so motivated, at least for the USMC. But one thing was for sure, he left me with the wrong idea of what you do to lose weight and I paid for that in the long run.
During my 2nd year in college my roommate's mother became gravely ill and died and she dropped out of school and went back home to be with her family. So I was all alone with my nag.
When I went home for my summer break, I was driving over by the mall and there was the recruiting office. It was just around the corner from the place that cut my hair, so one day I just went over and looked through the window. The offices for all the branches were in the same location, so I just stood there and looked at all their combined posters and recruitment paraphernalia. I had already decided that the USMC was out and even though I had warm fuzzy feelings for the USAF I had decided that I wanted to go my own route and do something completely different than what my brothers and father did.
That left me with the Army and the Navy and both seemed equally attractive to me at that moment. So I went home to contemplate. After long and in depth, pros and cons style debate inside my head, I decided that the Navy just wore too much polyester for me and I went with the Army. Not that this was the only reason I joined the Army mind you, but it was one of the deciding factors for me. That and I liked all the soldiering types of things the Army did and the thought of being trapped at work on a boat for 6 months at time with no place to escape did NOT appeal to me, so I went with the US Army. Now all I had to do was lose the weight.
