My Weight Loss Story

(Last updated 7/19/2009.)

I started this journey to get healthy, trim, and fit on March 3, 2008.

A little background

As a child and teenager, I was never really heavy. I was an athletic teenager, swimming competitively and hiking 20 miles easily on weekends at school. By the time I started college, my waist was 23″ (I’m 5′6″) and I was lean and fit. Life progressed, I had two babies (and the dreaded baby weight) and lived through two divorces eventually ending up a good 100 pounds more than I was before my first daughter was born. (She is now, at time of writing this, 29.)

In July 2007, at 47, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and a severe vitamin D deficiency. I also have degenerative disc disease. I couldn’t walk two downtown blocks without experiencing burning muscles and severe shortness of breath. I had suffered from edema in my ankles off and on for years.

My attitude around food was that it was a necessary evil. It was required to keep my body going, but I hated cooking, I hated eating around other people, and I especially hated going grocery shopping. I had no clue how to put raw ingredients together, even if I followed a recipe, and have anything nearing tasty result. I could craft a beautiful outfit from flat fabric, but I couldn’t make a decent casserole.

After the fibromyalgia diagnosis, and also the birth of my first grandson, I dealt with some depression and battled what it meant to be a grandma. I love my grandchildren and am tickled silly about being a grandma, but I also didn’t want to be a traditional grandma with gray hair, crippled, and knitting in a rocker on a front porch. I also was not going to let the fibromyalgia cripple me. I was determined to try to find a way to live a full, active life with it. I realized that I could let the fibro kick my ass, or I could kick it back. I chose the latter.

Enter Weight Watchers.

On March 3, 2008, I joined Weight Watchers. I was done trying to lose weight by myself. I was done doing it my way and accepted the fact that I don’t know how to eat right, I don’t know how to manage my weight, and I needed help. Weight Watchers has changed my life. I decided to follow the guidelines – as they were taught to me by my leader – and do what was recommended. If it worked for so many millions of others, it had to work for me as well. I figured I’d try increasing activity, but I did it very, very slowly.

I am enjoying cooking and learning new recipes. I have made new friends – lifelong ones, I hope – and I am told I have inspired others to join Weight Watchers or to start their own journey to healthy living.

As of April, 2009 – I can now easily walk a 10K walk (6.8 miles) and can bicycle about the same distance. Every Saturday morning, a group of my WW buddies and I go for a long walk – up to two hours at a brisk pace. I still have fibromyalgia and some days I’m still in a lot of pain. But I persevere and keep tracking, keep journaling, keep exercising, and most importantly, keep attending my WW group. I haven’t ever missed a meeting.

I’ve hit a stubborn plateau – mostly due to becoming more at ease with eating, and laxing off a bit on the tracking and diligence. However, I’m pushing past it and will hit my ultimate weight loss goal. I hope to achieve that this year – preferably in the summer – but we’ll see. I kicked that plateau!

As of July 2009, I can easily walk 10k (6.2 miles) and just completed running my first 5k (3.1 miles) race! And I didn’t come in dead last, either – about middle of the pack. Pretty good for my first time. The following day, I also hiked 5.4 miles up 1300 feet in elevation without any negative pain afterwards.