Deciding to Change

In mid-September of this year, I stepped on the scale and saw a number that I'd never seen before -- 192 lbs. Even though that day of reckoning had clearly been coming for a long time I was surprised and dismayed. I'd never weighed that much before. That same week, I saw a video of myself that I thought was downright disturbing. On the video, I looked so much larger (or should I say wider) than I felt.

I was determined to do something about it so I started dieting. I'd been successful dieting exactly once before when I went from about 180 to 145 shortly after Casey was born. And I'm not sure that time counts because I basically followed the Troy McClure diet, Smoke Yourself Thin. While that diet did work, I do not recommend it.

Anyway, since then I had had no luck losing weight -- in fact, it seemed that every year since then I had gained exactly 10 lbs and had gone from 145 to 190 in five years. And once I got past 155 or so, I wasn't particularly happy about it. This is the one thing in my life that I wasn't satisfied with. Everything else has been going so well that in some sense I was resigned to just being heavy as if it were the price I had to pay for success in everything else.

So when I saw the video, and saw that number on the scale I knew I had to do something but I wasn't particularly hopeful as to the outcome.

I dieted hard but after a month the scale was almost right back where it started.

It seemed I was doomed.