My Weight Loss Journey

It felt like I had tried everything over the course of the past 30 years.

The hotdog diet.
The cabbage soup diet.
The cleansing drink diet.
Counting calories.
Cheap hypnosis.
The not so cheap hypnosis.
PhenFen - the magic pill that made it all melt off...until you stop taking them and it all comes back.
Nutri-System
Even Weight Watchers a couple times.

I even tried to tell myself that it didn't matter and that I didn't care. But the truth is I DID care. As I look back over my prayer journal that I started on Christmas 2003 my repeated, consistent and earnest prayer was for God to put the desire to want to eat healthy, want to drink water and want to exercise on my heart. I prayed and waited. Occasionally I'd start a "diet" or "exercise plan" but it usually didn't last long and my heart wasn't in it.

In January 2006 my co-worker, Pam, came to me and said, "I joined Weight Watchers, do you want to come too?" My first thought was, 'Do I want to do this AGAIN?', my second thought was, 'She's going to lose all this weight and I'm just going to be mad at myself!' and my third thought was, 'YES, I want to join with you!'

So on January 19, 2006 I started down a familiar, yet very different road. The first thing I think made a huge difference is that my prayers were heard and God was ready for me to do it.

There are several additional factors that I believe also made it different this time:
1) CORE program was a big hit with me because I wasn't required to track everything I ate which fit perfectly with my personality. In the past I'd be little Miss Perfect and track everything for a couple weeks, then I'd get busy and the tracking (and thus the weigh loss) would fall by the wayside. Then seeing no results I'd get discouraged and quit.
2) Somewhere along the line I stopped thinking of it as a diet and instead thought of it as a lifestyle.
3) My leader, Deb, was awesome.
4) The support and ideas I got at my weekly meeting was wonderful.
5) The support from my family and friends was great. (I'd pull out of the parking lot after a meeting and be on the phone to my daughters, mom and husband to tell them, "I lost 8/10's of a pound this week!" or "I lost a pound this week!"
6) The accountability and support of going the whole journey with Pam was key.

On September 28, 2006 I hit my goal weight with a loss of 50 pounds! On November 9th I made lifetime status and now as long as I stay within no more than 2 pounds over my goal weight I will never have to pay to go to meetings again!

I have many ideas and thoughts on weight loss and maintaining healthy eating habits. However I'll save them for future posts.

For now, let it suffice to say that this has been a hard fought journey and I know my weight will always be something I'll have to pay attention to, however now feel like I'm well equipped to keep on top of the battle!