Colleen27
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2007
- Messages
- 24,190
Well, since this is my first journal entry, I may as well get all the BS and excuses out of the way.
I've always struggled with my weight. When I say that, I don't mean that I've always been overweight. In my teens, I was a competitive swimmer and a size 7. I weighed 145, and looking back, that was on the thin side of perfect for my 5'7" athletic frame, but according to the all-important teen fashion mags, I was 10 lbs overweight. Thus began my battles with food and weight - I tried everything to drop that last 10 lbs that I thought I needed to lose, and my yo-yo dieting continued right up until I found out I was pregnant with my DS9.
Pregnancy was a great weight loss plan for me. With both my children, I weighed less at 2 weeks postpartum than I did at conception. However, trying not to get pregnant was horrible for me, weight-wise. I gained about 60 lbs in the years after the birth of my son, a gain I atrribute largely to hormonal birth control methods - birth control that didn't do me much good in the end anyway.
I didn't lose much weight while pregnant with my happy surprise, DD5, but I didn't gain anything either.
Having kids really changed the way I see myself and my body, and I've been pretty happily overweight since DD was born. My weight crept up to about 235 in the first year after she was born, and has remained pretty steady ever since, creeping up just a few lbs over the last year to my current weight of 241. And I really haven't felt bad about being overweight or had any real desire to lose, until recently. For some reason, turning 27 was a turning point for me. It feels like 30 is just around the corner, and it is time to take better care of myself. Even though I feel like I'm in pretty good health and have no problems being active and keeping up with my kids, I am starting to feel like I won't be able to continue to take that for granted unless I make some changes now.
Disney has actually been a big part of the process of realizing I need to change some things. Going to WDW with my mother, who is turning 60 and has been overweight for all my life, was like looking into the future at myself if I don't change my habits now. She's not in terrible health and she's managed to avoid the serious medical pitfalls of being overweight thus far, but she tires easily, doesn't deal well with heat, and just generally can't keep up with the pace of something like a Disney vacation with 2 active kids. I want to be more active than her at that age, and that has to start now. And the very fact that I feel like I need to step up my workouts to prepare for our next trip was a wake-up call that I have a lot of work to do!
So this is where I'm starting from.
Starting weight: 241
Ultimate goal weight: 165
Short-term goal: 199 before our next trip, Oct 3, 2007
And this is the path that will take me to where I want to be:
Between being a stay at home mom and the fact that my kids aren't in school, I don't make time for exercise nearly as often as I should. One of my biggest obstacles - living in a small town, 45 minutes from the nearest gym - vanished last fall with the opening of a new gym just a few blocks from my house, so there is no excuse for not getting there. Even if I only have 15 minutes to spare, that's better than nothing. The goal is to work out 6 days a week and work my way up to 5 miles per day between the elliptical and the treadmill.
I have a major Mt Dew habit. This is the single worst facet of my diet, which is otherwise pretty good, and this has to go if I'm ever going to succeed at losing weight. If I eliminated that habit alone, with no other changes to my exercise level or eating habits, I would lose a little more than a pound each week! But I've never made it past 24 hours going cold turkey, and don't seem to have the willpower to have "just a little", so this is probably going to be my biggest challenge.
So those are the two big changes I'm making now, and the two that are going to take some serious willpower. There are other, smaller changes I've been making to our family's diet, but those don't take much effort because my eating habits are pretty good to begin with (aside from the soda, that is!).
Today's progress:
1.13 miles on the elliptical
1.01 miles on the treadmill
2 glasses of Mt Dew so far, at 7:10PM
No more excuses. It is time to make this work.
I've always struggled with my weight. When I say that, I don't mean that I've always been overweight. In my teens, I was a competitive swimmer and a size 7. I weighed 145, and looking back, that was on the thin side of perfect for my 5'7" athletic frame, but according to the all-important teen fashion mags, I was 10 lbs overweight. Thus began my battles with food and weight - I tried everything to drop that last 10 lbs that I thought I needed to lose, and my yo-yo dieting continued right up until I found out I was pregnant with my DS9.
Pregnancy was a great weight loss plan for me. With both my children, I weighed less at 2 weeks postpartum than I did at conception. However, trying not to get pregnant was horrible for me, weight-wise. I gained about 60 lbs in the years after the birth of my son, a gain I atrribute largely to hormonal birth control methods - birth control that didn't do me much good in the end anyway.
I didn't lose much weight while pregnant with my happy surprise, DD5, but I didn't gain anything either. Having kids really changed the way I see myself and my body, and I've been pretty happily overweight since DD was born. My weight crept up to about 235 in the first year after she was born, and has remained pretty steady ever since, creeping up just a few lbs over the last year to my current weight of 241. And I really haven't felt bad about being overweight or had any real desire to lose, until recently. For some reason, turning 27 was a turning point for me. It feels like 30 is just around the corner, and it is time to take better care of myself. Even though I feel like I'm in pretty good health and have no problems being active and keeping up with my kids, I am starting to feel like I won't be able to continue to take that for granted unless I make some changes now.
Disney has actually been a big part of the process of realizing I need to change some things. Going to WDW with my mother, who is turning 60 and has been overweight for all my life, was like looking into the future at myself if I don't change my habits now. She's not in terrible health and she's managed to avoid the serious medical pitfalls of being overweight thus far, but she tires easily, doesn't deal well with heat, and just generally can't keep up with the pace of something like a Disney vacation with 2 active kids. I want to be more active than her at that age, and that has to start now. And the very fact that I feel like I need to step up my workouts to prepare for our next trip was a wake-up call that I have a lot of work to do!
So this is where I'm starting from.
Starting weight: 241
Ultimate goal weight: 165
Short-term goal: 199 before our next trip, Oct 3, 2007
And this is the path that will take me to where I want to be:
Between being a stay at home mom and the fact that my kids aren't in school, I don't make time for exercise nearly as often as I should. One of my biggest obstacles - living in a small town, 45 minutes from the nearest gym - vanished last fall with the opening of a new gym just a few blocks from my house, so there is no excuse for not getting there. Even if I only have 15 minutes to spare, that's better than nothing. The goal is to work out 6 days a week and work my way up to 5 miles per day between the elliptical and the treadmill.
I have a major Mt Dew habit. This is the single worst facet of my diet, which is otherwise pretty good, and this has to go if I'm ever going to succeed at losing weight. If I eliminated that habit alone, with no other changes to my exercise level or eating habits, I would lose a little more than a pound each week! But I've never made it past 24 hours going cold turkey, and don't seem to have the willpower to have "just a little", so this is probably going to be my biggest challenge.
So those are the two big changes I'm making now, and the two that are going to take some serious willpower. There are other, smaller changes I've been making to our family's diet, but those don't take much effort because my eating habits are pretty good to begin with (aside from the soda, that is!).
Today's progress:
1.13 miles on the elliptical
1.01 miles on the treadmill
2 glasses of Mt Dew so far, at 7:10PM
No more excuses. It is time to make this work.
I've only had one glass today, and while all the iced tea yesterday kept the headaches at bay, I have that fuzzy feeling now that I get before the all-out headache sets in. So I put on a pot of tea and bought a bottle of excedrin migraine (which contains some caffeine), and I'm prepared for the worst. 
The painkillers are keeping it down to a everyday headache level, but I'm just sort of out of it and there is no way I was up for my usual hour at the gym during DD's ballet class. One of my friends, who was as big as a Mt Dew addict as me when we were in college, swears the headaches only last a couple days. I've never made it long enough to find out. 
