Eating is fundamental, but so is a happy weight!

What I'm Listening To: Idealistic by Digitalism

I've struggled with my weight all my life. You should read my high school journal -- every other page was "I have to lose 20 lbs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or I'm gonna scream!!!!!!!!!!", no lie. Then every other page was me proclaiming my undying affection for some dorkasaurus ass in one of my classes, and how he never looked at me, how I was just gonna die if he didn't answer my note, blah blah blah. Did I tell you about the time someone....oh, right, my weight. Sorry about that. (oh, don't worry Layla, I'll bring my senior picture to work...soon. I promise!)

Anywhoo, as life went on I just kept putting on the pounds. I won't bore you with my stories of how I tried to lose the weight, how I went on Atkins, how I tried every other Cosmo and Glamour magazine diet they published, how I flirted with skipping meals (which also introduced me to the wonderful yet cranky world of low blood sugar), how I exercised like a nutbag and still nothing. I've tried to inspire myself by reading every heroic fiction book about the fat girl who loses all the weight and then SURPRISE! everyone loves her, all her bad habits disappear, she gets a boyfriend and everything turns out okay -- yeah, maybe the fictional heroine lost the weight in the end, but I was still a chunk eating her second bag of red licorice Nibs.

Okay, I'm getting off track here, but basically this was how my dieting odyssey went until about 2006 when I hit my heaviest. Jim and I were really overweight. Uh, have you seen my wedding photos? There's a reason you don't wear satin when you're fat, people.

So there was this weight loss program at work, and what happened is employees paid $10 a month to participate, but you got a ton of money back if you lost weight. I thought it sounded super dumb, just a repeat of all the diet rules I already knew, but finally I gave in and asked Jim if he'd join with me. I mean, the money was a real incentive, seriously. And oh, let me let you in on a secret - we lost weight.

It was kinda funny dieting with my husband. He was like completely oblivious to any diet guidelines, rules that every woman knows like the back of her hand. Trust me, I have never questioned these rules. I mean, if someone told me that eating dirt would make you lose weight, I would be out there making mud pies with cinnamon in them, no kidding. So when Jim would ask silly questions like if he could still have Doritos (uh, they're corn, and that's a vegetable...right?) or what was so bad about Culver's (don't go there!) it made me laugh out loud. Here was a total diet virgin and I was there to break his cherry. So I taught him about baked vs. fried, veggies vs. processed foods, and next thing you know, he's shaking his head at me when I'm putting mayo on my veggie burger. Sheesh!

Every week we weighed ourselves on these program scales and then we got the checks if we lost weight. To make a long story short, Jim lost 100 lbs and I lost 30 lbs by the power of teamwork and making some really easy changes in our lives and our eating habits.

How did we do it? It was no more double meat gyros with extra sauce, no more Chinese food every Sunday, no more supreme pizzas at 2 AM. I mean, you're talking to a couple who used to eat a dozen eggs, bagels thick with cream cheese and half a package of bacon for their Sunday brunch at home. Basically, whatever we could stuff in our maws was fair game! Now it's smaller meals, veggie burgers and steamed vegetables for dinner, exercising 3 times a week, and an occasional meal out. We have maintained our new weights now for about a year!

When I started this blog tonight, I really wanted to talk about our nightly snacks, and how much I adore pretzels, but I couldn't tell you about the end of our dieting journey without telling you how we got there. So maybe next time I'll tell you about my love affair with cheesy poohs (otherwise known as cheese-flavored Quakes, those little rice cakes) and how I'll never turn down a fudgie (yeah, it's a Skinny Cow frozen fudge bar, so get your mind out of the gutter!).

I applaud you if you're trying to lose some weight, and if you're not, well, as my mom always told me, everybody could lose 1o lbs. Happy eating!