Health Overhaul Week 1: Weight Loss?

Growing up as an overweight child is traumatizing.  Kids are just down right cruel, it is hard to keep up in sports and sadly food becomes comfort so it just perpetuates the problem.  I love my family but my genetics are not in my favor.   At 5'4" I am the tallest person on my mom's side of the family, degenerative backs, heart disease and diabetes run in the family and both sides of the family have painfully slow metabolisms.  You stand out and are among the minority if you are thin at one of our family functions.

My school pictures.  This hangs in my parent's bedroom.  Why? I don't know. I certainly don't want my kid's school pictures hanging in my bedroom but here they are in all their glory.  You can see I start out all cute and then end up gaining weight around 3rd grade.
(Please excuse the 80's perm and shoulder pads.  I didn't know any better. )

You can see in the first picture on the second row that I really start gaining weight.

With that being said I had to realize very young that my physical appearance was not going to get me very far and I was going to have to become very comfortable with my personality and who I am on the inside.  I am glad I realized that young because now as an adult I know better.  Knowing who I am, being comfortable with that and having confidence is something I have always loved about myself.

However I still want to be healthy and happy.  When I was in high school my mom and I joined weight watchers and I lost around 40 pounds.  I remember it being really easy and that mystifies me to this day.  Why was it so easy?  Or was it?  I even worked at an ice cream shop.  I think my metabolism was much faster and I didn't drink so that was completely out of the equation.  Its been about 10 years since I lost the weight and in that time I have gained 25 pounds of it back.  And even though it is only 2.5 pounds a year it still adds up.  Taking my two trips in June which both involved swimming and being in bathing suits I realized just how uncomfortable I am in my own skin.  I feel like a skinny person living in a mildly overweight person's body.  I have been trying to loose weight on my own for probably 3 years now and obviously it isn't working so I went back to what has worked for me in the past and I joined weight watchers again only this time I am doing it online.

Today was my first weigh in and I am going to just have to admit that I kind of blew it last week.  I drank way to much alcohol and snacked a lot on the 4th of July.  I thought I had it covered with my weekly points and activity points but I just wasn't sure.  I knew I had been feeling a little bit different but not as much as I thought I should.  So I made my way to the gym this morning to go to spinning and weighed myself.  I lost 1.8 pounds which is disappointing but expected.  It scared me because I am easy to get frustrated when loosing weight and then that eventually leads to giving up all together.   When I got home I entered my weight and took my measurements and thank god I decided to take my measurements because that is where I found my success.  I loss 2" in my hips, an 1" in my waist and .5" in my arms.  F ya! I pretty sure it is due to the increased amount of exercise I am getting as well as my change in food intake.  I thought I ate well before but what I am eating now is much different.  I realized that my snacking and alcohol intake is probably what contributed to the weight gain in the past.

Things I realized this week:
Oh, you mean I can't drink as much beer as I want?
exercise exercise exercise!!!
Going to parties with snacks is a dangerous place for me to be
I like spinning.  It is the fastest way to burn calories, earn points and get exercising over with.
Plan out what I am going to eat when I go to restaurants.
Portion size matters.


We will just have to see where exactly this journey take me.