So, that's me, Denise, and this is my blog. If you've looked around even a little you know that this one is focused on weight loss, so here are the vital statistics. On a good morning I'm 5' 4" inches tall. This morning I weighed 248.2 lbs. I also measured myself: Bust 48 1/8", Waist 45 7/8", and Hips 56 3/8". That gives me a BMI of 42.6, morbidly obese. Technically I would barely qualify for bariatric surgery. I'm not interested in that right now. Several people close to me have had the surgery and I have seen that it can have dramatic results. It also has its own set of side effects. If I were to start to develop type 2 diabetes (a distinct possibility) I may be more inclined, but for now I'm going to try this the old fashioned way.
My weight history is fairly unexceptional. I was a normal, skinny child. However, when puberty came and I stopped growing up I started growing up. As I recall. I started High School at 150lbs, slightly chubby, but nothing to write home about. Four years later, 1994, I was roughly 200lbs. On and off efforts in college would result in small dips or leveling off followed by another climb. By 2001 I was about 250lbs and ready for a serious change. Starting that summer I threw all my effort into Weight Watchers. I'd done Weight Watchers before, but this time I really worked at doing it well. By December of 2002 when I got married I was down to 190lbs, a total loss of 60lbs. An extremely stressful job put the weight right back on. The pattern in college then repeated itself: an effort, a dip, followed by relaxing and leveling off, followed by more relaxing and another climb. In March of 2007 our prayers were answered and at 230lbs I got pregnant. By December I delivered a healthy baby boy and I weighed 260lbs. In the time since then I have lost some weight, but I need a more focused effort with some faster results, so I don't give up and go right back up.
In my weight loss battle, like everyone, I have some cards stacked against me. My drawbacks are these: I can't afford a personal chef or a personal trainer. I have never been an active person, all my hobbies are sedentary (like sitting at a computer and blogging *grin*). I need to cook for a husband, and don't have the extra money for my own pre portioned meals (Jenny Craig, NutriSystem, and so on). Also, I'm at home with a baby most of the day, prime time for unconscious eating. There is no gym near me that is really convenient, even if I could afford one. I also live on top of a mountain, so the roads around me are sloped, making for difficult walking. Sidewalks around here are also nearly nonexistent, making walking not just difficult, but dangerous!
Enough whining, those are the negatives, let's move on. I also have some pluses working for me. First, I know what works for me: the Weight Watchers point system (more about that later). Second, since I cook for my husband I control all the food that comes into the house, and I control what is for dinner. I also have a disincentive to rely on fast food, I need to get home and make dinner. Third, although walking on the neighborhood streets near me generally isn't practical or safe we have a great county park a mile and a half that is a little lake with a nice smooth path (perfect for a stroller). One circuit around is roughly a 5K, or 3.2 miles. That's a nice distance to burn a decent amount of calories and still be doable for a morbidly obese woman pushing a stroller. Lastly, and most importantly, right now I have the time. I know from my previous effort that, at least at first, an intense amount of time and effort is needed to change old habits.
Lastly for today, I’ll include a note about Weight Watchers. It is my opinion that there are two basic ways for controlling what you eat. First, you can count something. That something can be carb grams, calories, fat grams, or portions of food, as in the diabetic exchange system. As far as I can tell all of these systems work reasonably well as long as you keep an accurate count. Second, you can extremely restrict what types of food you eat. This would be the Eat Right for Your Type diet the Zone Diet and others. Again, these diets also work just as well as you follow them. Weight Watchers offers an eating plan for each system. For the counters there are points. Points is the Weight Watchers system that mainly uses calories, but also fat and fiber, to give every food in the world a point value. You then count the value of all the food you eat, making sure to eat a minimum number of points in a day, and stopping before you go too far. Or, they offer a core plan. The core plan restricts you to certain, mostly high fiber, low fat foods, along with lean cuts of meat and certain dairy products. With this plan there is still a bare minimum of counting. For more details about either I encourage you to go the Weight Watchers website or a local meeting. A second crucial part of the Weight Watchers plan, at least I know it's crucial to me, are the meetings. Having accountability and a community is a huge (pun intended) help. I prefer not the pay the weekly fee, for now, for that community and accountability. Instead, I'm putting this out in the ethos and hoping to build my own community and be accountable to you all (whoever you all may be). I fully expect that later, when I get closer to my goal I will be in a position to start attending meetings.
More next week--Denise
