Let the life-change begin. . .

Pizza at 11 pm was hard to give up, the first time. McDonalds was the real kicker. I remember thinking, we eat here 3-4 times a week, if we could cut it down to just once or twice the pounds would start to come off. Eating out has always been my favorite thing to do. Something about being served delicious food and then not having to clean it up, what a treat. Besides McDonalds, we'd eat Chili's, Taco Bell and anything else that sounded good at the time.

However, I knew in my heart that I was very unhealthy and had a problem. David was huge too, and so I knew in order for me to change WE had to change. And so I prayed. I prayed that somehow God would change David's heart. And suddenly, HE DID! In November of 04 D went to Dr. and was told his BP was high and was borderline diabetic. He came home that day and told me that he was going to start going to the Y before work. At the same time, I decided to start working out after I got up and got the kids dressed in the morning. Actually, I started walking on the treadmill and watching ER. Every day I would go to the Y and walk. I weighed 200 pounds and I knew I looked like a fat idiot walking on that treadmill, I knew people were thinking, that person is so big, she is not going to take the weight off, but I was going to change and I was going to be the one in however many that really did lose the weight (so many other times I was not).

In February, I was at 190. I'd lost 10 pounds in 6 months. How devastating. But I was still feasting at McDonalds. David and I would go to the Y on Saturday, WATCH the boot camp class, think someday we'd be taking that class, and then we'd go to McDonalds for lunch.

Then a pivotal moment occured. One night David came home and was hungry. It was close to 11pm, and he went to turn on the stove. I spoke up and said, "Hey, how about instead of a frozen pizza, have a bowl of cereal." And while he pouted, he did have the cereal. It was at that moment that the food piece started to fall into place.

However, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't really sure what healthy eating looked like. So, I went to the library and checked out a book called, "Healthy Eating Everyday." I have to say, if someone ever wanted me to endorse a product, that would be it. Besides the Y it's the one thing that moved me forward leaps and bounds. It seems so funny to me now that I didn't know what to eat or what was healthy, but I just didn't. Our meals had lots of breads, white pasta, fatty cheese and butter. We lacked COLOR, and so I began to learn. At the same time, I had healthy friends who'd give me tips about what to add to my diet. It was amazing!Healthy food tasted GOOD!

And so, finally both the eating and exercising were in the right place at the right time and the weight started coming off. The more I changed, the better I felt and the more I wanted to lose. I must confess, it was hard. There were nights I would go to bed hungry. But you know what, I would think, I'm losing weight while I sleep. If I would eat before bed, I'd be eating away the weight loss. This helped.

To go from a size 20 to size 6 took 18 long months. And they were long. As pounds came off, other things were revealed. That's the part that people don't talk about. These weight loss programs make is sound like if you just eat right and exercise you'll lose weight. This is true in and of itself, however, the reason that I gained the weight in the first place was because I did not want to deal with the real issues. And that is a story for another day.