WWWednesday - getting back on the wwwagon.

No, I'm not stuttering. The extra W's in wagon stand for Weight Watchers.

I weighed in at 175 this week, after not going to the meeting last week due to lack of funds. I'm not happy about this, and it's high time I kick my ass into gear again.

I started Weight Watchers in April of 2007 at my all-time high of 232 lbs. My legs hurt a lot, I had gastrointestinal issues, and I generally felt like shit, both emotionally and physically. I've generally been struggling with weight since I was a child but unlike a lot of women (and men) I've also been fiercely anti-diet. I've always kind of known that dieting doesn't work. I've known for years that what I needed to do is improve my eating habits. But I've always been a ridiculousy picky eater.

I don't mean to say I have some kind of sophisticated palate. No, I was, and in some ways still am, picky like a five year old.

As such, I've never really known how to make myself eat healthy. As a smoker with myriad health issues and a fundamental lack of co-ordination, the excercise portion of diet-and-excercise kind of eluded me as well.

But no less, something had to be done. Like I said, I was in craptacular health and I found myself becoming afraid that I was not going to see my children grow up. As I voiced these concerns to my mother, she finally said to me 'If it's a money thing, I will pay for you to do. You have to do SOMETHING." She was right. I signed up the next week, although I never ended up taking her up on her offer to pay for the membership.  All issues regarding body image and idealized beauty and such aside, I knew there was no effin' plane of existence where 232 lbs on a 5'5" frame could possibly be healthy.

So that was April 2007. It around that time that I also decided to quit smoking. In the beginning, I used a very simple method to keep myself accountable without shouting to the world "HEY! I'M LOSING WEIGHT AND QUITTING SMOKING! HOLY SHIT!" I kept two numbers in my MSN status line.. the first number was the number of smoke free days and the second number was pounds lost. Occasionally someone would ask "Hey, what's the deal with the numbers??" and I'd tell them of my decision to improve my health habits. Generally I'd be met with support. I liked it because I'm generally not comfortable with tooting my own horn (or if i do, it's usually in an over-the-top, ironically self-deprecating manner) so this allowed me to have some support without feeling the pressure of having EVERYONE know.

I think I need to make myself accountable to others for a while again if I'm going to make to my goal finally and not hit a back-slide into old habits. I think I'm going to post my progress on wednesdays, and while I'm there I can share some stories of the challenges and triumphs I've faced and continue to face on this journey. As of today I have a total of 56 lbs lost, and another 25 to go.


I will do this, dammit.

Me, December 2006 - 230 lbs

May 2010 - 173 lbs.