Let’s finish the story today. What the leader at the weight loss meeting should have said was “Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels.” I can get behind healthy. Healthy is quantifiable. Resting heart rate, blood pressure, relief of aching joints… When I had lost weight and was exercising regularly, I had more energy. I could carry things up a flight of steps without being winded and when you live on the second story that is important. My overall sense of well-being was better. So why did I stop and why am I starting back now?

I don’t know for sure. Wrong motivation? Food deprivation? Cessation of exercise? All that I do know is now that I am approaching 53, I need to get back on track. I hurt—feet, ankles, knees, hips. I sound like a bowl of rice cereal when I get up in the morning. If I live to be a senior adult, I want to be an active one. The kind that kicks ass and takes names. (I’m kind of kidding about that last part. I just want to be able to lift my feet up and remember names!)

And now I start… Well, actually, I started about three weeks ago. I purchased a fitness band and began logging my daily food and activity. While it takes a bit of time, it’s so much easier than following a plan or counting points. It’s simple math of calories in verses calories out. That is the basic formula for weight loss. (Weight loss in real life should be so simple! At the very bottom of this blog, I’ve attached a couple of links that calculate calories.) I would like to lose 20 of the 30 pounds I gained. Why just 20? Because maintaining that full weight loss was a constant struggle. I don’t want to fight anymore and since I’ll never “feel” thin enough ever, I’m letting that go as well. I am eating better and incorporating intentional exercise back into my life. I walk more days than not and have added a fitness class using drumsticks into my exercise repertoire to mix things up a bit.

If you would have told me nine years ago that I would be where I am now, I would have told you that after working so hard to lose the weight, I would never let myself put it back on again. Heck, I would’ve said the same exact thing each and every time I’ve lost weight. And nine years later, I’m back at it. I’m not going to lie. It’s still a struggle. When I get up in the morning, I can think of 100 reasons not to walk. But when I look at my progress over these few short weeks, I lace up my shoes, crank up my walking music and haul my lazy butt out the door. And, I have started food planning. You have to when you are choosing to live a healthier lifestyle because hunger is an enemy of good food choices. When I’m planning now, I’m occasionally including small portions of food I love because otherwise, I’ll have an unplanned overindulgence.

I honestly don’t know where this journey will lead. It would be a relief if it busts up the triangle/hexagon but old habits die hard. I know this because I have been trying to kill these for years. The only thing I do know for sure is that I’m headed into the right direction and according to my fitness tracker, I’m 227,681 steps further ahead than I was three weeks ago. Wish me luck!

Me at present day, after I managed to find the 30 pounds I had lost!

Here is a link to a site that allows you to calculate, based on age, sex, current weight, height and activity level, calorie intake needed to maintain or lose weight.

Caloric Intake Calculator

This is a link to a Body Weight Planner. You tell it your stats and what you’d like your weight to be by a certain date and it will calculate the number of calories you should eat daily to hit that goal. This is on the USDA website.

Body Weight Planner

(Disclaimer: I am not being compensated in any form for attaching these links. These are sites that I’ve found useful and just wanted to pass along.)

Love Triangle (When I First Realized I Was Different)

Love Triangle (Thinking Thin)

I have a confession to make… I have been embroiled in a love triangle for a long time and this sordid affair must come to an end. On one side, there’s me. On the other side, there’s food. And, on the remaining side, there’s my desire to be fit and maintain a healthy lifestyle. If truth be told, it’s probably more like a love hexagon when you also consider my love for anything that remotely resembles a dessert, that I hate the feeling of deprivation when I’m “dieting” and that, in addition to work, my hobbies (blogging, reading, genealogical research) are sedentary. Of course, a love triangle sounds much sexier than a love hexagon but when you’re in conflict with food and your emotional and physical well-being, there’s nothing sexy about it whatever terms you choose to use.

In my family we have a saying, “Some people may eat to live but we live to eat.” From home cooking to fine dining and everything in between, count me in. I love food. Always have. I was every mother’s dream. Put any jar of Gerber’s in front of me and I ate it. Food marked every special occasion or celebration and was a way to demonstrate love.  As in, “Happy birthday! Here’s your favorite meal of fried chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn and homemade rolls. Oh, and I made your favorite, an oatmeal cake with brown sugar icing for dessert.” And at our family reunions, the amount of food could feed a small third world nation. Now before you get any ideas, I must tell you I had an extremely happy childhood, surrounded by people who loved and supported me. But in addition to the abundance of love, there was always an abundance of food.

The teasing and taunts about my weight began around fourth grade. I don’t think I really noticed a difference between me and my peers until they ungraciously pointed it out to me and from that point forward, I became “fat.” It started to become ingrained into my identity. I wore “chubby” sized kid clothes (I think they call them “pretty plus” now). I was picked last for any group activity in gym. I started choosing more solo activities to avoid the name calling. I developed a warped sense of my body image. If my peers thought I was fat, well, I saw myself as bigger than fat. The result of this?  Around about the age of nine, my love/hate relationship with food commenced and the love triangle was firmly in place.

I’m not asking for a pity party and I certainly don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. This is just part of my story and before I can move ahead, I feel I owe you a bit of the backstory.  Tomorrow, I’ll delve into my attitude towards weight loss.

This is my fourth grade school picture.

For Part Two of this story, click here: Love Triangle (Thinking Thin)