Ok Lets Do This!

Well I'm starting a new journey today...its my first day on Weight Watchers. I wasn't really planning to put it out there to the world but since the only 2 people who read my blog consistently (love you mom and Jenn) already know about it, why not? Plus, maybe writing about this journey will help me think through it more. Also, maybe this will be another place where I can be accountable.

So why now? Well my struggle with weight goes waaaaay back. Probably to middle school. I've always had a bad body image. I remember thinking that I was so fat in high school and when I look back at the pictures now, I was pretty thin. Certainly nothing that I would consider fat. During college, my bad image along with some pretty horrible eating habits ended me in the yo-yo dieting/gaining weight cycle. I would get really heavy and then lose a bunch of weight only to get heavy again. Frustrating. And what a horrible time to be doing that, trying to meet people and dating. Ugh...moving on.

After college, I did lose a bunch of weight by working out and eating healthier. I was in a really good places where I was happy with myself and probably the thinnest I've ever been in my adult life. That's when I met Steve. We both had good habits of being active and fitness was important to us. However, we also both had a history of not so great food choices. That combined with our new relationship status I think let us slip a lot in our eating and maintenance of an exercise routine. So we both ended up gaining weight our first year together, but we were happy. I've noticed over my lifetime when I'm happy in a relationship its much harder to get motivated to work out and lose weight. For some reason I get complacent when I'm happy emotionally. I wonder if its the same for everyone?

During our relationship Steve and I have tried numerous diets to lose weight together. Its really been failure of commitment and motivation on our part, if I'm being totally honest. We did lose a lot of weight before our wedding but pretty much gained it all back on the honeymoon. Oops.

Fast forward to now, I'm 9 months past giving birth and still holding onto some extra weight from my pregnancy. I went back to my pre-pregnancy weight pretty quickly after having Steven but that still left something to be desired. When I found out I was pregnant, my OB had concerns about my weight. He wanted me to lose weight in the first trimester which I did (mostly by being so nauseous and barfing all the time, but anyway). So, while I know most people try to get back to their pre-pregnancy weight I really need to lose much more than that.

So why Weight Watchers? I feel like WW might be the way to go to help me get my bad eating habits under control. I have periods of time where I make really good, healthy choices in food and then there's times where I completely blow it. So I feel like it will be good for me to track what I'm eating and have some accountability using the WW points system. I also really like that they give you extra weekly points you can distribute however you want. That's a really nice bonus. So if I know I'm planning on going out to dinner Saturday I can try to behave the rest of the week and use my extra points that day. They also have a separate point system for nursing moms, which is really nice.

So what kind of goals am I setting for myself? I think overall I want to lose 40lbs. In order to even be in the healthy weight range for my height and age I would need to lose a significant amount of weight (its depressing to type that). But I don't want to just be in the very top of the healthy weight range, I'd like to land somewhere more towards the middle. So I think 40lbs would be a good long term goal. In the short term, I'd like to lose 10lbs. I think I can accomplish this in 2 months. I'm planning to do WW to track what I eat and I'd also like to set myself the goal of going to the gym 3 times a week to start. I feel like those are realistic goals and I feel optimistic that I can achieve them!

So, friends and family, wish me luck! I hope to discuss some of my WW journey with you on here so stay tuned....