One More Try

Over the years I have been on countless diets and exercise programs. I've never had to diet for any kind of medical issues, but only because I wanted to lose weight, and to try and eat healthy.
Unfortunately I am a junk food addict, so no diet ever worked for long, I just didn't have the willpower to stay away from junk food (I especially love chocolate, and salty chips).  I'm also a big lover of bread.
The only diet that ever really worked for me was the Atkins diet, but that diet entails bread deprivation.  I lost a lot of weight on that diet, but as soon as I reintroduced carbs the weight came back on.  Atkins is a great diet if you need to lose weight fast, the pounds drop off, but it's not a lifestyle diet.  Well, not for me anyway.  I do know people who have sworn off bread for life.  I just can't do it.


So after trying all sorts of diets and failing miserably, I just resolved myself to a life of being overweight.  I think being overweight hasn't really bothered me because for all of my childhood, and teen years, and my twenties, I was very skinny.  I was so skinny, in fact, that I was constantly made fun of. 

I was called Olive Oyl

There were comments such as, "Eileen, you have two threads hanging from your skirt.  Oh, wait, those are just your legs."

I was called a walking skeleton.

And in my teenage years I was told I was flat as a board.

My husband's brother (at the time my boyfriend's brother) used to tease him, whenever a commercial with Twiggy came on TV he would say, "Hey, Ray, there's your girlfriend on TV!"

Yes, I was that skinny. 

And it wasn't like I didn't eat.  I ate everything and anything I wanted.  I just didn't put on weight.

So, after living years and years as a 'Skinny Minnie' I didn't mind at all when I started putting weight on in my thirties.  It felt good to have curves for once.  And I loved shopping for clothes!  But by my mid-forties, those womanly curves turned very round and very fat.  And, eventually I gained so much weight that my 'normal' weight was more than any of my 'pregnancy' weights (I have five children, and I never weighed as much carrying any of them as I do now). So, over the past ten years I gave half-hearted efforts at losing weight, with the results being failure after failure, or failure to keep the weight off anyway.

Now, having just turned 58, and at my highest weight ever, I decided to give it one more try.  But I'm doing things very differently this time.  I'm not doing any one diet plan, but I am doing a mixture of things that have worked for me in the past.  I'm taking tips from this diet, and meal plans from that diet, and I'm making up my own new lifestyle.  I guess you could call what I'm doing a 'modified' Atkins.  I know I can't do without carbs, so I am just doing without white carbs.  I eat lots of pumpernickel bread, lots of veggies, lots of turkey, and I eat eggs a few times a week.

I can't give up eating out altogether, just as I can't give up junk food altogether, so I am allowing myself one 'cheat day' each week.  Also, I found a diet tip that said to eat the same thing everyday, and while that might get boring, it makes it easier for me to stick to my plan.  And, I'm trying to drink more water (something I should be doing anyway as I don't hydrate enough).

So far I've been on this diet for two weeks and I've lost four pounds.  Not a lot, but enough to keep me on the plan.  

I had started exercising right after the New Year, but another tip I found said not to exercise for the first two weeks of your diet, because exercise builds muscle, and muscle weighs more than fat.  So to give yourself an incentive, it is best not to exercise so that you can see some weight coming off.  And once you start exercising you have to forgive yourself if you don't see weight come off in weeks three, four, and maybe even five.  Just stick to the diet and keep exercising, and by week six you should see results not only on the scale, but also a change in your body shape, and a loosening of your clothes.

So, we'll see.

Monday I go back to exercising, I'm hoping it doesn't slow down the weight-loss process, but if it does, at least now I'll know the reason.

Okay, at the end of two weeks, I am four pounds down and sixty-one more to go!