It appears I may have gained weight…….

(This is not me in this picture, its not this bad yet!)

Great—I haven’t tried to lose weight in years. I think I have forgotten how or where to start! I don’t own a scale so I can only judge my weight gain by the way my pants fit.

A few years ago I decided I was happy with my weight for two reasons; 1. I was happy with the way I looked. 2. I didn’t want to buy any more clothes of a different size. So, I just worked on maintaining. I did this by portion control. I ate half of anything ordered from a restaurant and only made half sizes at home. I watched how many chips and other things I ate by reading the back and measuring out or counting a correct portion size. This worked great! I did manage to lose a few pounds 5lbs or under but over all my clothes still fit well.

Here are my excuses:

Then in 2008 I had surgery on my leg for a desmoid tumor. In doing so I lost a few more pounds, 10+lbs. Now, my clothes fit lose and looked awful. So, I thought that meant I could snack and eat as much as I wanted. This seemed to be ok; I slowly started filling out my pants correctly.

Then December 2009 my office burnt down. 2010 started off with a lot of stress of getting the office back up and running. This meant working lots of Saturdays and Sundays. I found I was always hungry and eating everything, mostly junk of course. Then my aunt passed away and that really added to my stress eating.

Facing the truth is hard to do:

Now it is May and I have notice my pants will no longer button and the ones that do are terribly tight. So, here I am. Realizing how this got started and now seeing what I have done wrong. Sure I am a normal girl, coming to the realization that I need to lose weight is over whelming, sad and disheartening but feeling sorry for me will not fix the problem. It will be hard for the first few weeks, getting my stomach shrunk back to where it got full on half sizes but what can I do. I did this to myself and now I need to fix it.

Here is the plan:

I will control my portions. I will only eat half of what I normally eat. I will follow portion guidelines on the back of everything I eat. (Cereal and so on) I will banish junk food from my house. I will only drink One Caffeine Free Drink a day (pop) and I will choose healthier snacks to eat at work. My before bed snack will no longer be a half peanut butter sandwich with strawberry milk, instead it will be a cup of strawberry milk and one piece of toast with butter. I am going to increase my activity level. Go on two walks a day at work and a few exercises on my Wii Fit in the evening.

Duste thought we should no longer eat Fast Food. So, that is being banished as well. When we eat out it is going to be at a set down type restaurant, which cost more so we will do it less.

I have no clue how long it will take before my pants will button again but this time I am going to stick with it!

Anyone care to join me in this challenge?