Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Choices

An Internet chat group that I am proud to be a part of had an interesting discussion a week or so back. Basically there were a few posts that said if you do these things you will make your life healthier. There was also a post in response to it where the poster said that they just could not understand why someone would continue to live at an unhealthy weight knowing all the health risks it poses.

As someone who has struggled with weight my entire life, I of course got hot under the collar when I read this statement. I wanted to shout "Do you think it's easy to desperately want to lose weight and fail over and over?" But I didn't. Then I began to think about it more and more and realized that despite that I didn't want to hear it....she was right. Why am I doing this to myself? Why do I continue to struggle with weight and not able to lose it? How close am I to making this a problem for my children to face as well? Of course it isn't easy to lose the weight. If it were, would there be a popular reality TV show with overweight people stepping on the scale scantily clad in front of America if it was easy?

It made me take a good hard look at myself and realized that I need to make some important choices. I can't change it all in one day. But I know that when things start to get hard or when I am not seeing the progress like the contestants on the Biggest Loser are seeing that I get discouraged and just say I will try it again tomorrow, or Monday or whenever the next easiest deadline I want to give myself arrives.

Well it's here. I have hit it. So instead of making a New Year's resolution I am making a mid-February promise. I am going to get healthy. I am not entirely sure how I am going to do it. I know that Weight Watchers while a great program and one I have succeeded on in the past isn't doing it for me. I also know that the ones like Jenny Craig or Nutrisystems where you get all of your food in ready to eat containers will give you portion control but I like to cook. I want to know that I don't have to depend on cellophane wrapped meals for the rest of my life to maintain a healthy weight. And kudos to those who have undergone the gastric bypass and have been successful, but I don't want to do it that way either.

So far my approach has been to eat less, move more. I stepped on the scale and when I have enough courage I will post the starting weight. Needless to say it isn't pretty and it starts with a "2". But, it's all downhill from here. I have my sparkpeople profile set up. I have my exercise regime started with 5 days per week of doing something whether it's a DVD in my bedroom or actually going to the gym.

So send some encouragement my way. It's going to be a long road. I know that people with thyroid issues that I have can encounter a tougher weight loss but it can be done I am told. So here it goes. I will check in at least once per week and let you know how it is going. Thus far I have run 6.2 miles this week and I have stayed below my 1500 calorie per day intake.

Onward and downward!