LAST YEAR....

I was really getting disgusted with being so overweight. I'd start thinking about losing,but then I'd see a story about somebody losing weight(usually on tv) and how they had to have surgery to remove the excess skin. I can't afford that so I'd forget about for awhile.
In January of this year, I had what I thought was a spider bite on my stomach. It just kept getting worse, so I had to go the doctor about it. While I was there, I talked to him about losing weight. Specifically,what would my skin do if I lost weight? He said if I lost slowly, my skin would go back to where it belongs. He said if you lose the weight very quickly, your skin doesn't know what happened and doesn't know where to go,so it just hangs there.

Well, I left the office and went to the grocery store. I bought healthier stuff and vowed to cook. ( I don't particularly love to cook,did i mention that? My middle name has been takeout for at least ten years!) I bought low-fat,no-fat,etc. Lots of salad veggies,lots of canned veggies. I started cooking and NOT eating takeout.

I went on my diet on January 16th,2008. At this time, I've lost 76 pounds! In two days, it will be 7 months since I started. I thought if I started this blog and told about my experiences,maybe I could inspire some people to help themselves without the expense of having surgery or one of those plans that cost a fortune for the pre-made meals(I couldn't afford that). If you found my blog,please come back. I'll be posting my strategies,recipes,some of my odd sense of humor. I should be back later today to post again and get this thing really going!

A little history...

I was a chubby early teen...got thin in high school and stayed that way pretty much in my twenties. The problem was that I love food and absolutely DETEST exercise!I met my husband when I was 14 and I still adore him. When he was 41 years old, he had a heart attack and had to have triple by-pass surgery. At that time, we had no kids( he was supposed to have to have surgery to make that possible) and we were common law. We got married 3 days before the surgery in his hospital room.His heart doctor told us that to lose weight, PAY NO ATTENTION TO CALORIES! Keep your fat content down. Well, using that as my guide, I lost 40 pounds in 1993.OK..here comes my downfall...3 months after his surgery( and mind you, this wasn't the type of surgery that was supposed to do the trick), I WAS PREGNANT!!! I had already started menopause. Anyway, I had my beautiful daughter two days before i turned 39.When I went for one of the last checkups before delivery, I asked my ob-gyn about the pain in my hips. He said," Oh, it's probably athritis. That's one of the things that happens sometimes when an OLDER woman has a baby." Older? OLDER?!? Did he really say that? Oh yes, he did! I told him," Well, ain't that a kick in the head? Old,pregnant AND arthritis to boot!"So you can see it coming, can't you? 40 years old,a toddler,hates exercise,TIRED,holds down a job,too tired to cook..... Yup,you guessed it. Started gaining weight...and gaining