Beginning a Weight Loss Journey

Diet is NOT a Four-letter Word

First of all, I want to say that this is me talking.  From the heart.  I struggle.  I struggle with food, weight.    It’s something I have struggled with all of my life.  Whether it be stress-eating or just not moving enough, I’ve gained weight.  

It’s been a long road.  After college, I lost a lot of weight, but it wasn’t done healthily.  I worked evening shift and basically skipped a meal or two per day.  We all know that is NOT sustainable, is it?  Well, it did come back after I got married.  After I gave birth to my daughter, I joined Weight Watchers.  You know what?  It worked.  I took the weight off slowly.  It wasn’t horrible, nor did I feel starved.  It worked for me.  After I got pregnant with my son, I left Weight Watchers.  I had intentions of going back afterward, but it always seem like it was one thing or another that didn’t allow the time to follow the plan.  The weight came back and then some.  

Here is a recent picture of me, so you can see a before picture.  It’s funny, but I couldn’t find any others of me by myself.  I’m sure there are some somewhere, but when you are overweight, you tend to shy away from having your picture taken.  At least, I do.  

But guess what?  Money talks.  It does, doesn’t it.  I work for a company that rewards employees with lower health insurance payments if certain criteria is met.  For me, it means losing weight.  I don’t have to lose as much weight as I have set for my goal.  Actually, their requirement is very doable.  I have a higher goal for myself because if I’m going to go on a diet for the lower insurance rates, why stop there?  Right?  I mean, I will feel better and have fewer health problems if I lose more weight than what they have required.

In order to lose the weight that I have set as my goal (74 lbs), I can’t look at this as a DIET.  Not that a diet is bad.  Diet is not a four-letter word, but I need to look at this as a “lifestyle change”.  Why?  Well, a diet refers to something you do in a relatively short-term to lose weight.  It doesn’t maintain the weight loss.  If I’m going to lose weight, I want to keep it off.  To do that, I need to change my lifestyle, my way of looking at food.  This is why I headed back to Weight Watchers.  Weight Watchers is a different way of training me to eat more of the right foods and less of the bad foods.  It’s not prepared meals that are high in sodium that are intended to drop the pounds quickly.  I’m looking for something that can help me sustain the weight loss for the rest of my life.  Eating real food.

So, please follow along and maybe even join me on my weight loss journey.  My weight loss ticker is in my sidebar, so you can keep me accountable.  I started just over two weeks ago and have lost 6.6 lbs as of Monday.  I don’t expect the weight loss to keep at that speed, and I do expect ups and downs.  It’s life.  So, join in the journey!  

NOTE:  I have not been compensated in ANY way for this post.  I paid for my own Weight Watchers online membership.  This is real.  This is me.