Here I am, 48 years old, definitely more than just a little pudgy around the middle, and doing my best to lose the weight I mindlessly let myself gain over the years.

Like most people I wish there was a magic pill I could take before I went to sleep at night that would melt all my fat away overnight so that I could wake up as a thin person.  I wish!

Losing weight is “friggin” hard and anybody who says it’s easy is crazy.

Well, maybe it is easy – for a little while.  I’ve lost lots of weight – literally hundreds of pounds.  If I would have kept off every pound I lost I would weigh a negative number (does that mean I wouldn’t exist?)

I just kept gaining it back, plus an extra 5 or 10 pounds every time just to make things more insulting.

Two years a go  I hit my all time high weight – hard to write it – but it was 286 pounds.  Now I know we’re all more than a number on a scale but that’s a lot of pudge to be carrying around and no matter how big boned I claimed to be that’s still over a 100 pounds more than I should weigh at 5’5.”   Cripes, I was starting to get into the sumo wrestler weight range!

I wasn’t feeling great and it was time for my yearly physical and “women’s appointment” so I made the appointment and then promptly went on a diet so I could lose some weight before facing the scale at the doctor’s office.  I weighed in at 278 (lost 8 pounds – yeah!), but my doctor was concerned about me having so much “body mass” (a polite way of saying I was really fat).  Plus my fasting blood sugar was in pre-diabetic range, my blood pressure was high, I had constant indigestion, my knees were creaky and sore, I was constantly tired, and my doctor thought she heard a swishing sound when she listened to my heart.

I finally got scared enough to do something so I joined Weight Watchers.  I literally felt like I had nothing to lose – it was about the only diet I hadn’t tried over the years (and yes I know Weight Watchers says “stop dieting, start living” but I was still firmly entrenched in the belief that losing weight is dieting and therefore very painful).  I lost 25 pounds in three months and then had 2 weeks where I didn’t lose any more weight.

So I “wisely” quit.

Smart idea.

I gained all the weight back.

So I went back to Weight Watchers 6 months later; lost 25 pounds; then quit a second time.

Then, in my merry go round way of living I had to make last year’s physical and women’s appointment so I made the appointment and quickly started dieting.  I weighed in at 263 pounds.  Whew!  I weighed 15 pounds less than the year before so my doctor couldn’t say I didn’t make any effort plus my blood sugar was back down to normal range and my blood pressure wasn’t quite as bad.

I then spent last summer doing…..you guessed it……gaining all the weight back plus an extra pound.  Yeah, you’re probably thinking that the fact that my blood sugar was down and my blood pressure was down even though I had only kept off 15 pounds would have motivated me to get back on track with losing weight right away – but not me!

In September 2008 I went back to Weight Watchers feeling like a complete failure and weighed in at 279 pounds.  Why did I go back?  It was the only program that worked for me.  My problem was that as soon as I had a bad week I gave up which made me face the grim fact that I obiviously don’t hand adversity very well.

It’s now May 28, 2009 and I’ve lost 51 pounds.  It’s once again time for me to make my yearly physical appointment which I’ll do, but this time I won’t go on another starvation diet to lose a couple pounds before I get there.

I’ll just keep trekking along following Weight Watchers and learning how to deal with the ugly voices in my head that are negative and self defeating.

My goal is to get to 160 pounds (yes, it’s about 10 pounds more than the high end of the weight range for someone my height but it’s sure a heck of a lot better than 286 pounds).

I’m going to do it by making the best food choices I can and by exercising.  No pills and no surgery.  I’ve tried pills.  All I’ve lost is a lot of money.  I’m scared of surgery for 2 reasons – being as heavy as I am means a greater chance of complications (such as the ultimate one where I am no longer here to do things like write in this blog), and making my stomach smaller wouldn’t deal with my mental issues.  Heck, if everyone ate only when they were hungry there would be very few fat people in the world.

I like to eat when I’m happy, sad, excited, depressed, angry………I can use any excuse to eat because I love food.  I definitely fall into the category of “live to eat” instead of the more sensible “eat to live.”

But I’m learning to change that.

So here I am – 51 pounds down and counting!

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