Life on Self Lane: Health

Part of my Health, Wealth & Happiness posts, focusingon how these 3 basic elements of life pertain to my particular journey.

This one is more of a diary & probably won't be all that interesting

to anyone else, which is good since no one else really knows about this blog.

Let's talk about weight loss. Let's talk about how muchI want to do that.

For as long as I can remember I have been preoccupied with my weight & with losing some of it. I can even remember back to elementary school when my BFF of the year & I decided we were going to only eat half of our school lunches to lose weight. I'm talking about early elementary school, like 2nd or 3rd grade. I remember always being self-conscious about my weight... and I think the other kids in school picked up on that so I became an easy target for bullying. I never really talked about it with anyone, but I remember being so young and crying so hard about what the other girls said/did to mock me. But this post isn't supposed to be about reliving childhood nightmares. Let's just sum it up by saying I can't remember a time in my life when my weight wasn't something I struggled with.

Fast forward to today. I'm happily married, have a good job & a wonderful house, but still struggle with my weight. So a few months ago I signed up for Weight Watchers (& a year ago I did the CarbLovers Diet, which worked well but wasn't a way of life that I could maintain, however I know people who have successfully lost weight on this diet & managed to keep it off.)... anyhow I was really gung ho about WeightWatchers for about the first week. Then old habits started creeping in - it doesn't help that I started doing this right at the major food holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now, I'm paying $40/month, & I've gained about half of what I lost (about 4lbs now). Folks, I should have already lost about 16lbs based on the whole lose 2lbs/week thing. Instead I've lost 4. And it's discouraging. Very discouraging. Mostly because I have specific goals in mind for the next year or so. I really need to lose about 120lbs to be in the healthy BMI range (for my own health). I also need to lose that weight to prepare for a healthy future pregnancy. But most importantly, I want to learn how to have a healthy life so that I can have a healthy family & so my future babies won't have such a difficult childhood.

But, I guess that's enough with the whys and wherefores, can I talk about HOW this is going to be accomplished? Because the honest truth is that I'm not entirely sure how I am going to do this. I know the basics: exercise and eat right. But I have a hard time putting this plan into action. I very often find myself unprepared on the battlefield of weight loss. But in an effort to be healthy and not just "lose weight" I've started going to a Zumba class near my home. It's a lot of fun for working out. She teaches 3 times per week, but I usually only average about 2 classes/week (which is still better than none!). As for eating right, I plan to stick with WW (It does work if you work it), but in an effort to save $$$ I will probably change to the online only plan.

But I also think it's important to have big picture & small doable goals.

Big picture I'd like to reach my goal weight of 160lbs (for

a healthy BMI range, although personally I liked the way

I looked & felt at 175 much better) before TTC.

Small doable goals:

I'd like to weigh less than 250lbs