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Andrea Mitchel is born
Andrea Mitchel is born on January 25, 1985. From a young age, she uses food for comfort and the result is rapid weight gain. -
Andrea's father, Robert, looses his job
A few weeks before Andrea's third birthday, her father looses his job. This leaves her family with a single source of income which then puts more stress on her mother and sends her father down a path of depression and drinking away his sorrows. -
Andrea starts school
Andrea is 5 years old and starts kindergarten. She goes from hanging out with her father all day or tagging along with her mother on her cleaning jobs to spending all day at school. -
The World Wide Web is made real
Tim Berners is a British scientist that created the idea for the World Wide Web that would connect anyone at anyplace. Keep in mind, he did not invent the internet. Today, you can find anything on the internet and that wouldn't be possible without the World Wide Web commonly abbreviated as WWW. -
Her father starts to act out at her mother
After a party one night, her father decided to try to help her mother clean up. Her father had had a lot to drink that night and her mother tried to get him to go back to bed. When she wouldn't let him help, he dropped her favorite set of plates onto the floor and yelled at her. He then proceeded to punch the wall space next to her mother's head. After realizing Andrea was in the room, he quieted down and went back to his room. It was the first time Andrea had ever seen her parents fight. -
Andrea is first bullied at school
One time when she was in second grade, she was bullied by a few of her classmates at recess. She was sitting on the swingset when a girl came up to her and told her the boys thought she was going to break it and that she should get off of it. When she looked towards the boys, they laughed at her. She had noticed she was big before this, she had just never been made fun of for being fat. -
Andrea tells her father she hates him
When her father gets into a fight with her mother, her brother, Anthony, decides to step in the middle and try to protect his mother. When her father starts to insult Anthony, Andrea intervenes. She looks him straight into the eyes and tells him she hates him and tells him everything else she was holding back. When she looks back into her father's eyes, she is heartbroken to see regret and failure. -
Her family moves from Methuen, Massachusetts to Medifled Massachusetts
After almost having their house foreclosed, her family is forced to move to her mom's parent's house in Medfield. There, she was bullied in school for being bigger. -
Her father tries to commit suicide
Although it was not the first time Andrea's father tried to kill himself, it was the closes he ever came to actually doing it. He had driven up the interstae while drinking vodka like it was going out of style. He was on his way to their old house in Methuen were he was planning to park is car in the garage with the engine running and close the doors. He was going to wait until enough carbon monoxide had filled the room to kill him. This opened Andrea's eyes ot how damaged her father really was. -
Andrea's family is evicted from her grandparent's house and moves to an apartment
After her family misses paying rent to her grandparent's for a few months, her greandparents decided to evict her and her family. They were told two beeks before Christmas that they had to be out by the first of the year. They moved to an apartment in Wilkins Glen, a low-income housing complex in Medfield -
Oklahoma City Bombing
Homegrown terrorists decide to drive a truck loaded with explosives into the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. This led to 168 deaths, 19 being children from the daycare in the building, and many more wounded. -
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Andrea's father goes out to Arizona
Andrea's father goes out to Arizona to sober up. He said he had a friends house out there and that he would come home after he was healed. He ends up dying there in July of a stroke. -
Andrea's father dies
After trying to stay clean from alcohol in a safe house in Arizona, Robert, Andrea's father, dies from a stroke. Unfortunately, neither Andrea nor anyone else in her family are notified until the following November because he did not have any I.D. on him. They actually had to find out who he was by dental records. Andrea losses apart of her life and eats to compensate. -
Andrea and her famaily fnd out that her father is dead
After her father went on a drinking spree in Arizona, the family had not heard from him in a few months. He was found homeless and at a train startion. The cause of death was a stroke likely from his unhealthy weight and alcoholism. -
Titanic premiers
The movie Titanic staring Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet is about a doomed vessel carry two star-crossed lovers. This film helped Andrea and her mother deal with the death of her father. -
Andrea is told for the first time she must lose weight
Andrea is told by her doctor that she has to loose weight. At this time, she was eating her way through her emotional termoil with having a single working mother and a deceased father. The outcome of her bad eating habits was that she was fourteen years old and weighed 200 pounds. -
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Andrea first tries to lose weight
After being told by her doctor she needs to lose weight, Andrea's mother signs her up for a weight loss drug trial. Twenty girls total volunteered and they were to take the pills and take advice from a nutristionist. Andrea, however, didn't know about portion sizes and still continued to eat too much and actually ended up gaining weight. -
Columbine High School Shooting
Two teenagers who attended Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado planned and executed a plan to kill their classmates and teachers whom they disliked. They managed to kill 13 people and injury 20 others before they commited suicide. -
Andrea attends her first formal dance
Although she is excited to get a date, her confidence sinks to an all-time low when she realizes that none of the size 16 or 18 dresses fit her. Eventually, her mom has to get a custom made dress from a bridal salon that cost more than she could afford. When the pictures from the dance come out, she is horrified of how she looks. What follows is dozens of failed dieting attempts loaded with self hatred. -
Andrea turns 16
After many failed diet attempts, Andrea finds herself a Sophomore in high school weighing 210 pounds and standing at 5'9" tall. She comes to the conclusions that she will always be "the fat girl" and gives up on trying to be healthy for awhile. -
9-11
Terroist decide to attack the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. They did this by hyjacking planes and flying them into both World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Another plane was hyjacked, but the passengers decided to crash the airplane in a field before anyone else could be hurt. In all, around 3,000 people were killed and many more classified as "missing". -
Andrea goes to Prom
After finding the perfect dress and having a handsome boy ask her to it, she attends Prom feeling as beautiful as ever. She can hardly believe it when she is crowned Queen. Throughout the night though, she notices that her date flirts with other girls. In the end, she finds her crush since 5th grade and talks to him for hours. Eventually, they become friends and go on dates. -
Andrea graduates high school
Andrea graduates high school in the spring of 2003. After a bad break up in January, she weighs 220 pounds. -
Andrea goes to college at the University of Massachusetts
After being denied from her dream college, the University of South Dakota, she is accepted to the much cheaper University of Massachusetts. Her friend, Nichole, is also accepted there and they end up rooming together. -
Facebook is founded
Mark Zuckerberg creates an app that allows people to communicate all over the world. Today, it has millions of accounts and can be used without cost. -
Andrea is bullied again
After a year of college passes without insident, Andrea and her friends meet a group of boys that bully her. Although her friends immediantly come to her resque, it isn't before she feels like a failure and her self-confidence is shattered once more. -
Andrea Mitchel celebrates her 20th birthday
On her 20th birthday, Andrea finds herself unable to control her eating habits and knows that it isn't healthy. She knows she must learn to control herself, but she can't. She ends up eating her entire chocolate fudge birthday cake leaving none for anyne else. -
Andrea comes home from college and her mother breaks her heart
After her mother not seeing her for a few months, they finally meet again when Andrea returns home from school. Her mom never says anything out loud about her weight, but the look in her eyes breaks Andrea's heart. At this point in time, she is a size 22. -
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Andrea loses 30 pounds over the summer
After realizing she has to lose weight, Andrea drops 30 pounds in 3 months over the summer by eating healthier and in moderation as well as exercising. She loves the results and decides to continue to put the extra work in to get them. -
Hurricane Katrina occurs
A hurricane later named Katrina hits the Gulf of Mexico. What follows is pure chaos. In the end, it killed nearly 2,000 people and caused $100 billion in damages. -
Andrea joins Weight Watchers
No longer happy with her weight loss results, she decides to join Weight Watchers. At her first weigh in, she is delighted to see that she weighs 228 pounds. She loves being taught the important of portion sizes and food points. -
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Andrea spends a semester abroad in Italy
Italy is known and respected for its variety of fine foods. After feeling homesick and in return overeating rich foods, she decides to get a gym membership and starts running. Running combined with her new controlled eating habits makes weight fall off of her. By the time she leaves Italy she goes from 210 pounds to 155 pounds. -
Andrea is thrilled to have lost 20 more pounds
After joining Weight Watchers a few months ago, Andrea is excited to learn that through dieting she has been able to get down to 208 pounds. Altogether, she has lost 60 pounds since May 2005. -
Andrea weighs 133 pounds
After returning from Italy, Andrea still worked out rigorously. She wanted to reach her goal weight of 140 pounds and she did. By the end of the summer she weighed 133 pounds. This means that she lost 22 pounds in the two months over the summer. -
Andrea seeks medical help
Andrea knew that losing weight was hard and refused to slip back into her old habits. She continued her obsessive calorie counting and was emotionaly broken. Her boyfriend, Daniel, convinces her to see a nutritionist and confront her fears. -
Andrea graduates college
Andrea graduates college from the University of Massachusetts a diferent person. Through therapy she has finally come to terms with food and can indulge in a savory treat now and then without going overboard. -
Andrea helps run a movie set
When Andrea's favorite actor, Leonardo Dicapro, is filming a movie in her home town; Andrea jumps at the opporutnity to help run the movie set. She works tirelessly at her job and enjoys doing it. She even sees Leo a few times. -
Andrea meets Leonardo Dicaprio
After working on his movie set for months, she finally gets to meet the famour actor at an oyster and wine party. She gets two pictures with him as well as a laughing session. -
Andrea undergoes surgery
Losing 135 pounds has left Andrea with nearly 5 pounds of excess skin on her belly and thighs. To remove this skin, she underwent a $15,000 operation that left her feeling more confident, but with scars. -
Barack Obama becomes President of the United States of America
Barack Obama makes history as becoming the first African American President of the United States of America. He becomes the 44th president and was re-elected to office in Noveber of 2012. -
Andrea moves to Philadelphia
Andrea moves to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to help on another movie set. This time, she has rekindled her relationship with Daniel and he goes with her. -
Andrea moves to Hamden, Connecticut
After accepted another offer to work in the film industry, Andrea's job takes her to Connecticut with her boyfriend Daniel. She knowns that she doesn't want to be in the industry forever, but she can't afford to give it up just yet. -
Andrea creates her food blog
After losing her job when the film was shut down, Andrea follows her passion and starts a food blog called "Can You Stay for Dinner?" In her blog, she talks about how she lost weight and shares recepies to help other loses weight the healthy way. -
Andrea moves to Seatle
When Andrea realizes nothing is making her stay in Connecticut, she decides to move to Seatle. Seatle would be the perfect place for her to continue to blog and she always wanted to move Northwest. Luckily, her commited boyfriend, Daniel, follows her. When she gets there, they find an appartment and she finds a job with a food and writing company. -
Osama Bin Laden is killed
After nearly a decade of evasion, United States forces manage to kill the terrorist behind the 9-11 attacks. He is killed in a safe house in Pakistan along with anyone else in it. -
Andrea breaks up with Daniel
After spending 7 years with Daniel, Andrea goes off to a food conference for her job and realizes that she no longer loves him. She comes home and decides break his heart because it is for the best. -
Boston Marathon Bombing
As racers were crossing the finish line of the famous Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, two terrorists decided to detonate bombs that injured racers and bystanders. Three people were killed and more than 260 other wounded. -
Andrea finally accepts herself
After years of living with different issues with food, Andrea finally accepts herself for who she is. She is an amazing person who cares and feels. Although her memories of food will always be there, her future can be bright.
