I wrote this post last August, intending to follow it up with a post on weight loss. I have finally sat down to write that follow-up post, so I thought I’d go ahead and publish this. :-) Obviously a lot has changed, since I am now pregnant and not as focused on weight loss as I was last summer. I’ll set part 2 to auto-post tomorrow so you can be watching for that!

———————
I used to always be thin, until I graduated from college. When I lived in Peru, we ate fairly healthy, mostly because (1) processed foods were hard to come by so everything had to be made from scratch, (2) someone else was doing the cooking, (3) we didn’t have access to the plethora of fast food restaurants, and (4) I did a lot of walking since it was a walking-friendly city and my family of 5 had only one car. Then I went to college where (1) I always ate at the dining commons since it was already paid for, (2) someone else was cooking, (3) I didn’t have enough money to eat out or snack on junk food, and (4) I didn’t have a car (until the end) so I had to walk everywhere.

I graduated from college and in 3 1/2 years I’ve gained about 50 pounds. Yikes! I’m actually a lot heavier than I look – most of my weight is in my stomach, so if I can manage to hide that then I don’t look as heavy. But to get back to a healthy weight (which is different than being skinny – I’m more concern with healthiness) I need to lose about 30 pounds.

I realized I couldn’t do it on my own. So I went on a diet (more about that later) and it’s been really good for me. I’ve lost 11 pounds so far of the 30, and already I’ve had a lot of people notice. I want to get down to a healthy weight so I can’t let myself get lax. I can be more strict, and add more exercise, but it’s really helped just to cut down or out French fries and Coke. I’m drinking a lot more water, watching nutrition labels, and trying to find healthy snack foods (like baby carrots and natural popcorn) for when I get the munchies.

Here is photographic evidence:

This was taken in April of 2007. I figure this was probably my heaviest.

This was taken in May of 2008. Since I don’t have a scale I have no idea how much weight I lost from the previous year, but this was about the time I started on my diet.

I was looking at the pictures Beth@TheNaturalMommy took from the Gerig Reunion, and was surprised to see this picture of me (sorry Beth, I stole it from your Picasa so it would be in the same format as my other pictures!):

I still have a bit of weight to lose in my face, but I was excited about how much my stomach had gone down! I still have a ways to go before I get to a place where I feel healthy, but I’m excited to be this far already.

I think I needed this affirmation right now. It helps me, especially on stressful days where I go spend $2 getting chocolate from the vending machine.

I plan to write a post later about my thoughts regarding food and dieting. Stay tuned. :-)