Back in the Game

I have decided to start a blog. A weight-loss blog, to be exact. I think it'll be motivating if I have a place to publicly report the weight I've lost each week, what I eat each day, and the general ups and downs of the journey. I think this will be good for me; it'll hold me accountable. And who knows, maybe this will motivate others to stick with their weight loss goals. Maybe I'll have "readers". Maybe my blog will inspire a movie. Ha!

Here's some background info. I'm female, 26 years old, got married in the summer of 2008, just bought a house with my husband (we'll call him Sam). I've struggled with my weight my entire life. I was a chubby kid, I was the "big boned" one in high school. In college, I gained about 50 pounds. Post college, I gained about 20 more as the result of Sam and I moving in together and having a stressful first year of teaching. I've been on weight watchers on and off since 2003 and have never been able to successfully stick with it. Now, Sam and I are the fat married couple. From the moment we started living together, it's been this downward spiral of developing bad, unhealthy, lazy habits. And we've been enabling one another to live that way ever since.

Now, I've known for a long time that I need to lose weight. This isn't some epiphany that hit me last week; I've wanted to get healthy and fit ever since the 70 pounds ago where I started. I've struggled with this, tormented over it for years. I have journals upon journals of angry, hurt entries full of the "why me"s and "what if"s. In fact, I've mooned over this for so long that I even know why I haven't been successful. I'm that kind of a person; I dissect everything down to its core, until there's nothing left but the raw truth.

And the truth is that I am a codependent personality. I am malleable. I am a chameleon. I change and shift depending on who I'm with or where I am. If I'm with my mom (RN health nut), or sister, or best friend (both beautiful and skinny), I eat differently than when I'm with Sam, or by myself. And that's true for all aspects of my personality; not just my health habits. I kind of hate that about myself, actually. Sometimes I feel like I don't have a true identity. And I've had it stuck in my head for the past 10 years of my life that if I could just lose the weight I wanted, I'd be a whole new person, with a whole new perspective on life. I wouldn't care so much about what others thought of me. I'd no longer have the insecurities that have been holding me back for so long. I don't know if that's true, but it's enough to keep me going.

It was a doctor's appointment that motivated this. My doctor told me that I'm basically infertile at the weight I am right now. I need to lose 50-80 pounds if I want to have children. And to say that I want children is, well, quite the understatement. It was heartbreaking to hear. But it was what I needed to jump start the process of change.

So, here I am. I've already made a lot of positive changes, like eating two pieces of fruit and a serving of yogurt every day, and joining a gym. In fact, making a weekly trip to the grocery store to buy fresh produce has become routine, and I've started heading to the gym right after work instead of stopping at home first. Just to be clear, I will not be revealing my starting weight. Let's just say that if I lost 100 pounds, I'd technically still be within a healthy weight range for my height. Ultimately, I'll be happy losing about 80 pounds.

First goal: 30 pounds by July