A month before my wedding, I couldn’t believe my eyes — my scale read out 140lbs (I think even 139lbs) at the very end of my diet bet… 6+ months of exercising with a personal trainer 3x a week, healthy eating, and making sure I stuck to it with the risk of losing $1000 if I didn’t hit my goal. That was the ONLY time in my life when I was consistent enough in my diet and exercise to crossover into healthy weight territory.
Three years and one baby later, I’m back up to around 180. While I give myself a little leeway for the whole having a baby thing, I’m now at the point where I had dropped to 175 after baby (215 being highest while pregnant) and then bumped back up again. It isn’t a surprise I gained the weight either… I’ve been living off a diet of, well, candy and junk from work and maybe a semi healthy dinner every once in a while that just has too many calories.
In addition to wanting to be healthy, feel better, live longer, yada yada, I’m also trying to get my weight down to get better rates on life insurance. I don’t want to wait too long to buy life insurance but at this point I’m in the obese category and that may disqualify me from getting life insurance to begin with (if my history of depression and anxiety doesn’t already keep me from being considered for a policy.)
So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and try a well-known diet program–weightwatchers, at the advice of my friend who recently lost 30 pounds in the last 5 months. I don’t love the idea of paying $20 a month for an app to keep me in check–but if it works, it’s worth that $240 a year. Sure, last time I lost weight using free calorie counting on myfitnesspal – but that was a pain in the ass and really I’m liking weightwatchers points system as it generally offers the same diet I was following but makes it somewhat easier to track everything. I also like not being so focused on calories and instead feeling rewarded for eating healthier food (ie foods with less sugars are lower points) while still being allowed to eat very small portions of non super healthy food (I’ve avoided that thus far since I know I’m a binge eater and I can’t stop at just one bite of a candy bar!)
Well, I’m less than a week into the program and I already had one major mess up day… July 4th… but I’m now back on track. My goal is to lose 50-60lbs by next July 1. I need to figure out a way to add exercise into my life. With work it’s hard to find the time but really I just need the motivation to go the gym and walk/run for 30 minutes for now. Once I get down to 160lbs then I need to start adding in more weights and such, but at the moment I just have to get my stamina back. It seems like a very very long uphill climb but at least I know I’ve done this before so it helps as a reminder I should be able to do it again.
I’m headed to the east coast to see family for a few weeks and I know this can go either way health wise. I’m going to try to cook food for myself and my mother for 3 weeks… it may be we can both lose 5lbs over those 3 weeks if we stick to my healthy cooking. That would be very exciting! I have no excuses on being healthy since I will be on break and have time to do things like cook and go for walks etc.
That 140lb mark was exciting a few years ago and then I totally blew it and was up to 170 before I got pregnant a year later. But it’s time to prove to myself that I CAN be healthy long term. Yes, I’d like to look good but also just feeling healthy makes everything else in life so much better and easier. And that’s definitely worth $240 a year for a silly app that helps me track what I’m eating.
