I'm overweight. Obese, actually. I weight around 220 lbs when I should weigh somewhere around 120 lbs. Honestly that seems a little low even though I'm under 5 feet tall. My eventual goal weight is the same as it's been for a long time: 135 lbs. But I'm going to do it in steps.
Right now the plan is to try to lose in 20 lb increments. I'm giving myself until August to lose the first 20. It's doable and I'm not going to use any fad diets or anything like that to do it. Instead, I'm making lifestyle changes. I'm cutting out fast food. I'm going to eat 3 meals a day instead of 1 or 2. I'm going to start exercising. And I'm even going to quit smoking.
My weight has been an issue since I was in middle school. In fifth grade I was a skinny twig of a thing and then sixth grade rolled around and I started gaining. Some of that was puberty, but some of it was the fact that I was being bullied a lot and I started to eat my feelings. That trend would continue for a long time. I don't know what my heaviest weight was, but I'm guessing it was somewhere around 230. Then college came.
I didn't gain the "freshman 15". In fact, I lost about 20 lbs my first year of college. I attribute it to not snacking and being more active. I was walking to and from class. I didn't have a car, so I was walking to get places. I lost even more the summer before my junior year because I was working a really active job where I was on my feet for seven hours at a time. I didn't look amazing or anything (I was still hovering around 190), but it felt good to see a number below 200. But the job went away, my habits changed, and the weight came back.
And it's stayed there ever since. I stopped walking as much as I used to when I got a car. I haven't been snacking or anything, but I have been eating LOTS of fast food, drinking sugary beverages, and being idle for most of the day. I'm actually surprised that I haven't been gaining weight, but that may be attributable to the fact that I smoke, I live on the third floor of a building with no elevator, and I'm trudging up and down the stairs for a cigarette once every hour or so.
Regardless, I'm making changes now that I'm hoping will have a positive impact on my life. I've eaten breakfast for the last three days (yogurt and granola or a bowl of cereal and a banana), my lunches have been healthy, and I haven't been eating out at all this week (except for Tuesday, but there's a long story as to why). Don and I have been making dinner at home all week and have already planned out our grocery list for next week. We're going to start getting up at 5 am next week so that we can get an hour of exercise in before showering/eating breakfast/preparing lunch/going to work. And the last cigarette I will (hopefully) ever smoke will be crushed under my shoe on Sunday night.
I may try this and fail. I may slide back into bad habits. But it takes 21 days to break a bad habit and I'm hoping that the same is true for starting new, healthy habits. I have Don to kick me in the ass if I start straying back off the path to healthy me and I have this blog to help keep me honest about how I'm doing.
Hopefully by August I'll be 20 lbs thinner and well on the way to becoming something new and better.
-J
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