Almost a year

It's been almost a year since I posted anything in this blog!  I went back to it today by just googling "blogger" so that I could start up a new calorie restriction weight loss blog. But reading these posts about parenting the boys from a year ago - well, I realize that I (can/want to/should?) be writing about both topics. Just quickly on the boys - the "2's" have mostly been a really wonderful time. I'm not even really looking back with rose colored glasses. Sure, we've had some issues of defiance and pushing buttons with each other and with J and I - but mostly they've been really great little people to get to know as they have learned to communicate with us. Lots and lots and lots of words. They both have been speaking in 5-8+ word sentences for a few months now. Especially G lately likes to tell great stories about whatever he's thinking about (which drives J a little nuts sometimes, especially in the car) and W likes to ask why, why, why. And I love this - I really do. I just wish I always had the answers. He asks Why? and I respond - and then he wants to know why to my response - and then another why to that response. Which I guess can get a little exhausting, but I still love being able to talk with them and know what they're thinking about. We're using the 1-2-3 counting method for discipline/training behaviors. It seems to work OK for the most part. It sounds like the "3's" are typically much more challenging with that, so we'll see.

As for weight loss/calorie counting and restricting - well, J has managed to lose nearly 50 pounds from his top weight of when we got married. Nearly 6 years later he's feeling much better and his clothes are really loose. I'm so proud of him!  Meanwhile, I've been using food to deal with all kinds of feelings, from boredom to stress to depression to anxiety. And while I certainly can't manage to binge the way I did back when I ballooned above 300 pounds before surgery, I can apparently slow-and-steady gain weight. I was at my low weight in the weeks after the boys were born - 173 was my lowest. I'm up to 206 this morning. I can't let that continue - don't want to let that continue! I feel OK right now, but I know I will feel much better/more energetic when I drop this weight. My goal is to get to a healthy BMI as measured at the doctor's office. My height is now 5'8.5" and so my weight will need to be 166 to be within normal range. Usually I can guess/allow for an extra 5 pounds at the doctor's office versus my home scale, so my ultimate weight goal is to be 161 on my scale at home. Which obviously means I want to take off 45 pounds. Which will likely take at least a year. My plan is simple calorie restriction. My sister emailed me a link to a story about a nutrition professor who lost a lot of weight by eating only Twinkies and other processed/packaged food (maybe had one protein drink each day plus a multivitamin) and by keeping his calories restricted he was able to lose a bunch of weight. So my aim is to consume 1600 calories each day, which should translate to dropping one pound of fat each week. I'd like to add in some exercise because I'm totally completely sedentary right now. I have a desk job and my elliptical machine is buried in our 3rd bedroom under piles of miscellaneous items. If I do 5-10 minutes of moderate exercise each day, that's better than the 0 minutes I'm doing now!

So - my goal is to track this process daily for the next year, partly because supposedly tracking your food with a journal is one of the big indicators of weight loss success.  So, why not!

I did already meet a major goal this summer - to drop my addiction to Diet Pepsi. I was drinking SO VERY MUCH of that stuff every single day and I felt like it added to my cravings for salt/fat plus I had an increased drive for sweetness. So after I got home from our family vacation in July I decided I would go cold turkey and not drink any of it ever again. So far so good - it's been since Saturday, July 25 and now here we are on September 23, the first day of fall - and I have had none of it. I'm really proud of myself and really happy that I won't be passing along that tendency toward my boys with the bad example. Instead they see me drinking a lot of water.

I do want to take some body measurements too, so that I can track how these change along with the number on the scale. If I can dig out my tape measure I'll give that a try too.  So today is my first day of calorie control, which I expect will last a lifetime. I should be able to easily maintain 161 pounds with 1600 calories/day, especially with my bariatric surgery - I don't really feel hunger the way I used to before I did that. I will need to figure out how much coffee creamer J puts in my thermos of coffee each morning to determine how many calories I'm consuming from that - and I might need to cut that down!

I'm actually a little excited about this - we'll see how long that feeling lasts. ha ha