Learning to not be so hard on myself

So I haven't posted since I last weighed in. I was incredibly disappointed when I weighed in

Previous weight: 272
Current weight: 270.2
Difference: -1.8, total -3.2

I know that it is a loss and I should be glad but I exercised every day last week but one and there were 4 days I think that I went to the gym and did the elliptical for 30 minutes which gets me sweating in about 2 minutes flat. I actually tracked my points and I was baffled. Again, I know that it is a loss but it does start to make me worry about if it takes that kind of work to get 1.8 pounds off now what kind of work will I have to do when I continue to lose weight. I know it will only get harder. My roomie pointed out that it might be because I went to the gym and worked out a bunch that I did not see much of a change. The muscle weighs more than fat thing. I certainly hope that is the case because it is really hard to stay motivated to go work out everyday when you don't see much in the way of pounds dropped.

I will say though that the working out at the gym has been really useful for me in terms of stress management. I have been going later at night and it has been kind of nice to work through all the tension that builds up during the day. My schedule is really hectic this month and I am completely overwhelmed almost to the point of shutting down so I think that it helps. There are some days though (like the last couple of days) that it is really hard to muster the energy to go to the gym at night. It also does not help when I come home from lab at 10:30 at night. So, this week has not been as great. I did not work out on Sunday but I did a hell of a lot of cleaning (4 hours) so I think that counts as some exercise. I went to the gym Monday night but have not had any exercise over the last 2 days. I am going to a concert tonight so that is a wash but I do still have Friday so I can salvage at least 2 gym days.

I am trying to stay positive but it is becoming really hard. When everything else in my life starts to get hard this is the easiest thing to give up. It is soooo tempting to stop worrying about tracking points or making sure I am eating the right foods. It gets hard to find the time to cook food at home instead of getting something from the nearest drive through. I have been fighting the temptation and doing my best to stick to my goals. A friend is coming this weekend which usually means bad food, drinking and no exercise but I think that this time it will be different. We stocked up on good foods to eat and cook with and maybe I can talk her into exercising with me :)

I weigh in on Saturday so I guess we will see what happens with that. I think I am also going to check my measurements at that time. It would at least be another way for me to see if I am making any kind of progress. So hopefully another update on Saturday.

Small steps

So, I realize that I have not posted in a month. I have been trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I was not holding myself accountable and I was having a hard time motivating myself. I got REALLY busy and just kind of let everything go. I know that I need to make myself a priority. I decided that instead of trying to do weight watchers on my own that I would start going to meetings again. It really does help. I will be held accountable and there will be other people right there who will be seeing my weight and whether or not I lose. It also makes me feel extremely guilty when I do not lose and there are other people who drop a couple of pounds. I think it is what I need right now.

So I went on 10/4 and I weighed in at 273.4 lbs. I do not think that I actually gained back 6 pounds but that I do not have a very accurate scale at home or rather I might be biased when reading my weight. I do know that I gained back some weight but anyways, it doesn't really matter right now. That is the number that I am going with now. I weighed in last week at 272 lbs so I lost 1.4 lbs. It was ok. I did not track very well throughout the week and I really did not exercise. I guess I have to be happy with that number. At the meeting they announced who came back for their first weigh in and how much they lost and I was a little embarrassed by my number. I realize that I need to really commit myself to this.

So far this week I have been tracking all my food and I have been exercising as well. I am really glad that I am finally getting some exercise in and I just need to make this a regular thing now. I am hopeful that this next week will be much better. I also will post some recipes later this week that I have been enjoying. I made a chili with morningstar crumbles and a wonderful pumpkin pie that is only 3 points per slice. It is a nice dessert that is not too many points.

I have been having a really hard time getting started with changing my life. I picked a time to start this change when everything with grad school is getting crazy. So I am just going to take one day at a time and try not to be too hard on myself. My goal this week was to get some sort of activity every day. So far so good. My roomies and I did crazy amounts of shopping on Saturday and Sunday. There was a lot of walking involved. I also had to go into lab on Saturday and the procedure that I was doing required me to go between two chairs about 6 feet apart. It was like doing a bunch of lunges. I guess that is all part of the grad student workout :)
My roomie and I went to the gym on Monday night and I walked 2 miles this morning. I am planning on walking 2 miles tomorrow and Thursday. So hopefully I can keep up with this for the rest of the week and we will see what happens on Saturday. Fingers crossed!

Stalling

Well this last week did not quite go as I expected. It was a really bad week. My biggest hurdle is going to be finding a way to deal with my stress and bad days/weeks without turning to food. I did not go completely crazy but it was bad enough. I had a really bad week school and work wise and aside from the stress eating kept me busy and I did not get to plan my meals very well. So, I weighed in at 267 lbs. I did not gain but I did not lose. I also did not exercise. It was just a bad week all around. I really have to make more of an effort to plan my meals and take the time to take care of myself. I am really struggling right now because I am working a ton and I am under an immense amount of stress. I know though that I need to deal with this now because I will always be under an immense amount of stress. It kind of goes with the career that I have chosen for myself.

So this week, I am going to focus on planning my meals, tracking my points, and making sure that I take care of myself first and foremost. I am having trouble understanding why it is so hard for me to do that but it is. I am also going to think about feasible ways to deal with my stress that fit into my schedule. Hopefully next week will be better. I am at least playing tennis on Saturday with a friend so that is something. So, until next week . . .

Progress

Well, I have been very bad about updating things lately. It has been a really busy week. I am preparing for a major conference that I am going to in November and I am trying to get as much data as possible by then. I have been working really long days these last couple of weeks. That has lead to the problem of not exercising. I have not exercised since before I was sick. I am running around most of the day so I think that I am least not a big lump. I am trying really hard to get up earlier but I just don't have the energy after a really long day to get up early the next morning and work out. I am going to make it a goal again this week though. I think I will start out light and say my goal is going to be to exercise at least 3 days this week.

So, onto the progress. I did not post last week but when I weighed myself I was 273. That was 2.4 pounds that I lost that week. I am now using my non-electronic scale. I will not get pounds to the tenth but at least I know that it is a stable reading, and I can calibrate it with some free weights that I have. So, last week was some good weight loss but this week was great. I am not sure if I was retaining water or what because I was not exercising but I am now at 267 lbs. That is a loss of 6 lbs for this week! That means that since I have started this blog I have lost 11 lbs. Yay!! My pants are starting to be a little too big in places now. I am not down to the next pant size though so I am stuck in that awful purgatory of between sizes. I think clothes companies like to taunt us by making sizes go in every two sizes. I wear a size 26 pants and the next size down will be 24. But what if I am a 25? I will have to wear 26 until I can comfortably fit into 24 pants. Hopefully that will be in another month or so.

This is now the smallest I have been in probably 4 years. I was kind of keeping my weight constant until I moved to Dallas. I started earlier in the year trying to lose weight and when I weighed myself I was 289 lbs. That is the heaviest I have been. On a brighter side, I thought about it today and that means that this year (or at least since March) I have lost 22 lbs. I think that is pretty good. Well this has to be a short post because I have to study for an exam tomorrow. Next week I will post my measurements. I am not sure how much they have changed but even if it is just 1/2" that will be something. So, I will work on getting at least 30 minutes of exercise 3 days this week and as the craziness dies down here I will try to post more.

Definitely Sick

So I definitely had a cold. Well, I still do. It really sucks. I have not been able to get much exercise because of it but I am hoping that the soreness in my body means it is using calories to fight the stupid thing :)

I have been having trouble tracking this week. I am someone who would lose her head if it was not attached and I find I am often putting my food journal down and then having trouble finding it. I am at least mentally keeping track as best I can. I have only lost the last couple of days but I am hopeful about finding it again today and trying to remember everything I ate in the last couple of days. That however, might be hard because I have to think real hard to remember what I did four days ago, much less what I ate. I cheated again and looked at the scale the other day. I just wanted to make sure I am headed in the right direction and I am. I lost weight. I am curious to see what it ends up being on Thursday morning.

This week I am going to try and get more exercise in to make up for my sick week. I am still sick but I am starting to feel better. I am hoping to play tennis with a friend and that usually wears me out. I know it is a good workout for her because I cannot seem to get the tennis ball within the bounds of the court to save my life. Apparently I think that the tennis racket is a baseball bat and I am trying to hit a home run. Well, at least my wrist thinks that. I did much better the last time we played and only knocked four tennis balls out of court I think. I am slowly improving and maybe in a couple of months I can keep the tennis ball within the lines like 50% of the time.

I encountered another obstacle this week (so many and it has only been two weeks). I have always known that I am an emotional eater and I notice it when I am sad or upset. I have never noticed that I eat when I am happy too. I had some good news this weekend about school and my grant proposal and my first urge was to eat. I would have thought that if I was happy I would eat less, that the food was to make up for whatever was making me sad. Apparently, it is just tied to any of my emotions. I think I feel as if I should be rewarded and I automatically decide to reward myself with food. Thankfully, I still had all of my flex points so I have not gone overboard but that was definitely unexpected. I will have to focus over the next couple of days to make sure I am getting in all of my servings of fruits and vegetables, water, and making sure that I stay within my points.

That leads me to another concern. I am really worried about when my points start going down. As I lose weight I lose points. I have a friend who has many fewer points than I do and I know that she struggles with that sometimes, staying within her points and still being able to eat the things she likes. I know that my stomach and appetite will shrink but I do worry about getting sick of the same foods and things like that. As I was mulling this over I was slightly horrified by my train of thought. I was thinking about how I would have to give up a lot of the foods I like to eat or rarely eat them. This thought really upset me. It is hard to fully experience that kind of an attachment to food. This is really hard. It is hard to think about giving certain things up. I know that it is making a choice and choosing me but it does not make it any less hard knowing that. I have lived my life a certain way for sooooo long and it is really hard to change that way of thinking. So, another thing to focus on. This is going to be a very long and hard journey. I think that is it for now.

The start of a new week

Sorry that I have not posted for a while. Sunday was pretty busy and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do about my scale. So when I weighed myself on Sunday I was heavier than my starting weight the week before. I could not imagine that would be the case though because even though I did not exercise much last week I did keep within my points for the most part so I should not have GAINED weight. Anyways, I think part of the problem is my scale. I weighed myself Monday morning again and it read 279 and then I weighed myself again and it said 271 and then I weighed myself again and it read 275. I am not sure which was the accurate weight. I have decided that when I weigh myself, I will do it three times to get a consistent reading and I have another, non-electronic scale that I will use to verify. So I also decided that having Saturday as my last day to the week in tracking food points is a decidedly bad idea. If I go out with my friends or got out to eat it will be on the weekend. I have decided to start in the middle of the week so that I will still have flex points on the weekend (and then the beginning of the week to work off the flex points). So, I will track Thursday to Thursday. My weight this morning was 276.6. At least I am headed in the right direction. The same weight showed up all three times of weighing myself so hopefully it will be right.

So, enough with that. I am trying to stick to my goal of working out 4 days this week. I did not really get anything in on Monday and Tuesday but I went swimming last night. It is really interesting that I get winded so quickly with swimming. At least though, no one can see me sweat and everyone is breathing hard in the water so it works for me :)
I am going to go swimming again on Friday and possibly Sunday. I think that I will try to take a walk tonight and go to the gym on Saturday afternoon. This will all depend on how I feel at the time though. I woke up with a really sore throat this morning that still has not gone away. This is a tell-tale sign of a cold. I am going to go to sleep early tonight and hopefully it will not progress into a cold but if it does I am going to have a very hard time sticking to exercising. The main reason is that I just get tired and sore. Well I am already tired and sore. I am sore all over right now. I hate being sick. I tend to lose my appetite at least.

So I am not going to make any predictions for this week. I am just going to commit to getting all my water in and I am going to track again. I kind of stopped tracking for a couple of days, but I am starting again! I will try to exercise as much as possible. That is the goal. Sorry this is a very boring entry but I am having trouble thinking at the moment. More later . . .

Not such a good week

Well I got tempted and peeked at my weight this morning and it is not exactly promising for the week. I hadn't even used any flex points really. The only thing I can figure is that I had A LOT to eat last Friday and Saturday before starting this and I think that my weight had not caught up with me yet. I guess we will see. This has been a hard week. The happy hour was not too much of a problem except for the one extra beer, but that is what flex points are for. The rest of the problem came in not having snacks during the day, a grad reception this afternoon (at least the food was pretty decent nutritional wise) and the biggest challenge to the week that is coming tomorrow.

Tomorrow we are having a grad student party. I am having it at my house and I am making burgers, but at least I got the lowest point buns and the leanest ground beef. I am also going to use 2% cheese and I am making a potato salad from a weight watchers recipe. I have been planning for this event all week, trying to save as many flex points for tomorrow as possible. My roommate is making some whole wheat pasta and we have quite a few vegetarians who are going to be bringing healthy snacks, such as veggies and dip. I am definitely going to cut back in the morning and at lunch so that I will not go over for the day. The problem is going to be TEMPTATION. I am going to try as hard as I can to stay away from the really unhealthy stuff and I am going to try and watch my portions. I am also going to try and make a conscious effort not to just keep snacking. I have a feeling that this is going to be a big challenge for me though. I guess I will just have to see how it goes.

The other problem with this week has been exercise. I have not been very consistent about getting it. I walked on Monday, we looked for Yoda on Tuesday, but I have not gotten much exercise in during the last 2 days. I definitely got a bit in today with some gardening work (at least my back and arms think so) and yesterday with taking apart a crate at work (my forearm muscles were completely stiff) but nothing that I would count as really exercise. I think part of the problem is that I need to re-organize my life a little better. I go into work without a plan for the day really, get side-tracked by my wacky colleagues, and end up staying later than I wanted to or come home much more exhausted than I counted on. I have definitely figured out that I have a greater chance of getting some exercise in when I do it in the morning. The problem has been this last week was kind of crazy and all over the place and I did not have a plan. I am a person that really needs to have a plan and a to-do list with little boxes to check off. My goal for this next week is going to be to get up and exercise in the morning at least 4 of the 7 days. I figure I will start off small and work my way up. I am slowly starting to get up sooner. I think that now that I am back in the routine of classes and lab that it might get easier. In an odd way, classes add structure to my week.

This all kind of leads up to the fact that I have had trouble lately with staying motivated at work. I think I am in need of a serious vacation. I have gotten really far behind and it is the type of thing that you are just so overwhelmed with how much there is to do that it is hard to figure out where to start. There are some nights that I cannot go to sleep because I keep thinking about all of the things that need to get done and the only way I finally can go to sleep is to get out of bed and write out a detailed, prioritized to-do list for the day and the week. That is the kind of thing that I am trying to change. Part of changing into the new me is going to be to start getting into a routine, sticking to the deadlines that are set for me or that I set for myself, and to get accomplished what I have said I will accomplish. I think this might be the perfect semester for me to do it. I just need a little time to breathe, think, and plan. The biggest problem is keeping the pressure off long enough to do that. However, I do have some resources at my disposal and I need to start taking advantage of them. Also, I am someone who would really prefer to have things extremely organized (I love my labelmaker) and I am having trouble first finishing the organization and then keeping it that way. It is a strange thing when your ideal work and living situation is one way and you seem unable to actually achieve that ideal. That is another goal for this year. I think I will take that one little by little though. Conquer one space at a time.

Why am I writing about all these different, non-weight related issues you may be thinking? It is actually not that non-weight related. It all has to do with how I conduct my life. Things get out of control and then I am just trying to keep my head afloat but not really getting anywhere. My weight is just one example of a bigger issue in my life. I need to get my life under control because I do not want to live like this for the rest of my life. I am hoping that by changing one area of my life that it will affect all of the other areas of my life.

I think that is all I have for now. I am getting tired and I have to go into work tomorrow before setting up for the party. Hopefully, I will only be there for about 40 minutes though. I will definitely post on Sunday with my new weight, whatever it may be. I am done with the incoherent ramblings for now. Until next time . . .

Updates and musings

So, I meant to post yesterday but we had a little excitement yesterday evening that prevented me from posting. I am about halfway through the first week and I think it is going pretty well so far. I had a happy hour to go to on Monday and I planned my day accordingly so that I would have enough points to have a beer. Of course I did end up having two and had to use some flex points. Thankfully I did plan ahead and I ate dinner at home so that I could manage what I was eating and was not stuck with "bar food" choices. However, I have eaten out at fast food restaurants a couple of days already but I think I at least made the best choice possible with the options that were available. I am also getting in all my fruits and veggies, water, vitamins, milk and the like each day so far. Exercising has been the real challenge. My roommate and I started walking in the morning. On Monday, we walked in our neighborhood for 30 minutes. I gotta say though, it is REALLY hard for me to get up early, and we are not even getting up that early. I think in order to make this work, I am really going to have to make a big effort to get to bed earlier. That is difficult though when I get back from school between 7 and 8 at night. I am going to have to get up early for class 2 days a week so I think that should help me get into a new sleep schedule. Oh, and the excitement last night was that our dog got out of the house so we spent about two hours walking and driving around looking for him. We got him back this morning and I guess I at least got my exercise in last night.

Now for some musings. I think the first week of starting to "diet" is both easy and hard. I say it is easy because the beginning is always the time when you are really committed to sticking with the goals and the diet plan. I always find that I track my food really well in the beginning and it becomes more inconsistent as the weeks go on (which is something I will have to watch out for). Right now I can remember all my reasons for starting this and this is the time I probably have the most momentum. The reason that it is hard is that I am now hungry more often. I am used to having really large meals when I eat and I do not usually snack too much between meals. I am trying to change that and eat smaller portions but more often throughout the day. However, I have problems with portion control so I need to make sure that I am not just eating more throughout the day. In the past, if I got hungry I could just eat whatever was available regardless of what it was. I think one way to solve this problem is to bring things into lab so that I can snack throughout the day. I have been having a hard time finding a lot of snack things that I like that I have room for in lab. I would prefer to bring in fresh fruit every day but our lab frig is only so big and I already have lunch stuff in there. I was not really prepared for this week and I am just going to have to make a bigger effort in the morning to make sure that I bring enough food with me for the entire day. The other problem is that during the day I have been having smaller meals and not snacking and I end up getting hungry more often, and more frequently. I think it is kind of a shock for my body and I know my stomach will adjust but it is that adjustment period that is hard. It has been really hard to stay away from the types of foods that I would usually eat.

An example was tonight. I was trying to just keep working and eat after I was done. The problem was that I got REALLY hungry. So, a few friends and I went to dinner and I chose Chili's because I knew there were a lot of good options with pretty low point values (their guiltless grill options are pretty great and well priced). However, I was really hungry and wanted an appetizer, something to hold me over until our food got there. One of the people I was with really wanted cheese fries and I figured I had some extra points left over from the day and if I only had a few it should be ok. I did stick with only a few. I think I had about 6 fries, just something to put in my stomach. The problem was that I really like cheese fries and I had to focus and concentrate on not reaching over and grabbing some more. It was really, really hard. It took a lot of willpower to sit there and not eat. I thought that it was kind of a horrible thing to experience, to realize just how much my normal habit, my normal action is to reach over and eat more. I realized that I am going to have to pay very close attention to myself so that I don't idly snack when food is in front of me. The other horrible experience was the intense urge to eat the cheese fries. I would reach for them and then pull my hand back. It is kind of embarrassing. I think that is going to be one of the hardest things to conquer and change. I did at least leave half of my black bean burger on the plate which is big for me. I have this unnatural need to finish everything on my plate. I know I am not the only one that has experienced that and this problem is the reason that restaurants will be difficult for me.

One of the things that should help with the whole finish everything on the plate is by slowing down. I eat really fast. Like crazy, ridiculous fast. I think that it mostly comes from having to eat on the go all the time such as eating in my car on the way from one job to another or trying to finish a meal on a 10 minute break because that would be the only break I would get that night. I now have the time to enjoy my meals, to slow down and eat but I still don't. The problem is that I don't realize how fast I am going until I am done and see just how much everyone else has left to eat. It is also how I get so full and almost sick later on. I am positive that if I eat slower that I will eat less but just like the intense urge to eat just a couple more cheese fries, I will have to really focus and concentrate and slowing down. My goal is match the pace of my friend Elissa. She says she is on the slower side of eating but I personally think that is the way to go. So that will be a measure of my success, when I eat at Elissa's pace :)

It is kind of strange to think of all the things that I am going to have to focus and concentrate on while eating. I am sort of worried that when I am pressed for time I will fall right back into my old ways. I guess I will just have to see how it goes and just take it day by day and week by week. The other problem I have encountered is that on my very first week, I have had a really bad week. I am a stress eater and an emotional eater. I know many people are and so many people will sympathize with my plight. I usually immediately turn to food for comfort. It is almost like a compulsion and sometimes something I do not realize until I am in the middle of eating something I shouldn't. I have done pretty well so far this week but it is going to be a battle every single time. I am a grad student and stress and blows to my emotional stability kind of come with the territory (I am only half joking). I need to find some other ways to deal with my stress, and realistic ways. I am still pressed for time usually and in a lab with multiple other people all day so things like meditation in the middle of my day is really not an ideal solution. That is just something that I will have to think on for a while.

My last musing in this very long post is that it is disappointing that the healthy option is usually the more expensive and less convenient option. I will concede that things like fast food places and restaurants do have many more healthy options than the last few times that I have tried this but it is still difficult. I am sometimes very limited in my choices of what I can have if I do need to eat out. Especially if I want to eat something other than a salad. It is usually a more expensive option as well. I think that is just cruel. As a grad student it is just not realistic to expect to be prepared at all times to never have to eat out, because it will happen. In fact, I think that it is not realistic for most people. Sometimes you are just too tired, just did not plan on staying so late at work, or are just too hungry. I am hoping that we keep getting more and more options and that they can start being on value menus because let's face it, I don't make very much and it is very tempting to get the cheaper but less nutritionally wise choice.

Well that is it for this post. Kinda long but I guess that is what happens when I don't post as often as I think I will. Anyone who knows me knows that I am very talkative so it should not be surprising that I write a whole bunch :)

End of Day 1

I just felt like adding a quick note. I am finishing up today and I stayed within my points value and I helped a friend move for about 1.5-2 hours which I am going to count as my exercise today. I want to say thanks to the people I have already heard back from today and whose responses are very encouraging. You guys are the best! Especially Linz though cause this was her idea :)

The Beginning

This is the beginning of what will hopefully be my successful battle with controlling my weight and myself. I have struggled with my weight my entire life and I have been successful before. However, I have never been able to keep the weight off for good. I think that part of the problem has been my lack of self-honesty and especially in thinking that once I lost the weight all the hard work was over. So now, here I am, about to start again and I needed to do something different this time. Doing the same things over and over has not really been working for me so here is something new. An awesome friend of mine had this idea and I thought that it might work for me as well (http://losingit-findingme.blogspot.com). This is something that I will be sending to my friends and family as a way to keep me accountable. It is very easy to tell yourself that if no one really knows that you are losing weight than if you stop dieting and exercising, it is really no big deal. I am hoping that this time, I can stick with it and change my life in the process. So to begin, I guess I should start with one of the hard parts which is putting up my weight, goal, and timeframe. While I am feeling brave, I am also going to post my measurements so that I can track those as well. So, here it goes:

Current weight: 278 lbs (this is sadly not the biggest I have been but very, very close)
Goal weight: 155-160 lbs (this may change the closer I get to my goal weight to see what is reasonable)
Goal Timeline: Lose an average of 8 lbs/month which is 2 lbs/week
This puts me at about 15-16 months, so by next Christmas.

Current measurements:
Bust: 50 "
Arm: 17.25 "
Waist: 55"
Hips: 58.5"
Leg: 33"


Yikes! My plan is to start counting weight watchers points again. I am going to try and get in at least 20-30 minutes of exercise every day. Now to be realistic, in the beginning, it is going to be a very big struggle to make sure that I get in that exercise every day but I am committed to trying!


Now to the other part of the blog. I am going to use this to try and dish a little self-honesty because lying to myself has obviously not been working for me. I really do not have a life altering reason for choosing to do this now other than it is just time for a change. I have grown accustomed to looking at myself in the mirror from the waist up and ignoring myself from the waist down. I have always put on the weight in my upper body slower than my lower body. I think I had been very much a pear for most of my life. I am definitely an apple now though. I think this allowed me to ignore just how big I was getting. I usually figured that I just had trouble finding pants that looked really good on me but at least I could find shirts. I have now hit the point where I can't ignore it anymore. I see it in my face and that has been the most depressing place of all.

For a long time I have just dismissed bad pictures of myself as "just a bad angle" but I really cannot do that anymore. Something that has been kind of hard for me lately is family photos. Most of the members of my family have struggled at one point or another with being overweight but now have it pretty much under control. Most of my family are in shape and on the thinner side. My mom sometimes says otherwise but she is thin :) I am now embarrassed when I look at our family photos because I am the fat one. It has gotten to the point for me sometimes that I feel like I don't fit into those pictures. This is an issue that has always been the root of my low self-esteem and low self-worth. As much as I try to act like I am ok with the way I look, and consequently the way I am, I am not. I am an embarrassment to myself. This is something that I do not readily admit to most people. I think that it is also why when I do try to lose weight I try to keep it from most people. I tell a few people what I am doing but I am embarrassed to say it aloud to everyone else, like my co-workers. I feel like it is admitting to everyone that yes I am fat and yes I also do not like the way I look. That is what I am trying to change here. This is a public blog and I am sharing it with people that I know will be supportive and help me. I should be proud of what I am trying to do and not linger on the embarrassment of how I let it get this far.

Another deciding factor for me is that I need to get in shape. I am a TA and that means that I have to proctor exams. Nothing is more embarrassing than not being able to get to the student in the middle of the row without knocking into someone else with my belly. I am lucky that I do not have classes in any auditoriums because I would barely be able to fit in the seats. When I do fit in, I usually cannot pull the little desk surface all the way down so I usually just take notes on my knee and pretend like that is the most comfortable position for me. I also want to be able to make it up one flight of stairs without losing my breath. I had a class that I had to TA for last semester that was on the other side of campus and on the second floor. Winters here are really cold but I would still have beads of sweat by the time I got to class. I would also have to pause outside of the door to catch my breath so that none of the students saw that I was breathing heavily from one flight of stairs.

I have always been afraid of change and I think that I have been hiding behind my fat girl persona for too long. This is what has been safe for me but it is also what has been hurting me. My weight has always been a sensitive issue for me and it doesn't take much for me to be hurt by some comments that colleagues might make about fat people in general. I always end up thinking that they must be thinking about me when they say that. I am tired of being told that I have a pretty face and would like to just be considered as pretty, completely. The biggest thing is that I want to take pride in myself. I am not proud of myself. Letting myself stay this way for so long has really taken a toll of my self-esteem and I have found recently that I really do not value myself highly. I have always thought that people who derive all their self-esteem from how they look were vain but I know that it at least begins there. And I know that if I do not value myself, how can I expect anyone else to do the same? If I do not think that I am worth it, no one else will either. This is why the biggest battle for me is going to be combating all of the thoughts and attitudes that I hold currently. My worst enemy is myself.

I am one of those people who always start things really well but lack follow through. I am not as good at finishing what I have started. I think that my struggle with my weight is just my biggest example of that. This is why this is not just about losing weight but about becoming the me that I want to be. I need to shock myself into motion, to take charge of my life and stop being such a passive force in my life. The first part of that is making sure that I make time for me. The biggest excuse that I use (and I use it all of the time) is that I do not have time. I have always thought it was because I was really busy. Working full time and going to school full time, then working two jobs but now I am in grad school. I have more free time than I have ever had in the past and nothing has changed. Nothing has changed because I have not made a change. My mom had pointed this out to me before I left for grad school and it is one of those things that I have been able to lie to myself about for a long time. I can make the time, I have just chosen not to.

This blog will not always be so gloomy but I had to admit those things to myself before I can move on and make a change in my life. And I do have to change. That is the only way that I will succeed. It will not just be following a diet and trying to stick to an exercise routine but instead I have to change the way that I think about food and exercise. I have to change my response to stress and depression and find another outlet instead of food. I know this is going to be really hard for me but I know that I have to do it if I am going to really enjoy my life and be happy with myself. So, here we go. I am starting today. I have already starting tracking for today. I will post my weight weekly and I will post my measurements monthly. I will try to post in between those times with some of the struggles and successes that I encounter. And in advance to those who know who I am talking to, thank you for your love, support and encouragement. And please, don't let me off lightly if I start to falter.

So here we go, to what will hopefully be the beginning of the new me.