Secret Confessions of an On Again-Off Again Weight Watcher

Struggling with the pressures of eating right is a day to day venture for me. Making the right food choices is sometimes very hard. You have to make sure that the products that you are eating aren't high in sodium or in fat, and have good carbohydrates or proteins, not to mention vitamins. The things that are tempting to most aren't the difficult enemies to me. I don't eat heaps upon heaps of bread and I don't like sweets, ice cream, or chocolate. My enemy is savory and that comes in the form of salty combined with high fat dairy, pasta, or protein foods. Examples of these bad food choices come in form of chicken parmigiana, your lasagna, pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, or macaroni and cheese. I was eating very little vegetables and it was very scary for a while. This lifestyle happened until about 2001 when my body couldn't handle it anymore. Many of the bad food choices happened, because of the company that I was keeping. You'd be surprised how much that can influence your life.

I wasn't a "fat kid" growing up. In fact, I was the direct opposite. I was a very skinny little girl who was encouraged to eat by her parents, grandparents and various relatives, because I was considered "too thin." I don't know if this started a bad trend or if this helped to enact the fat gene to begin in my adult years, but I don't think it helped entirely. When I started taking heavier medication for my health problems in my late teens and early twenties, my body seemed less and less able to remove excess body weight. This is when the problem started and I should have paid more attention earlier in the game. I had very bad role models in forms of parents and friends, whose eating habits sucked to say to the very least and I followed suit. I was, indeed, the fool! I got to a point after marriage and at a certain weight, where I felt hopeless. That's the time when you feel the least happy with your appearance and the least beautiful as a person. In essence, your self-esteem is at -100%.

I have to admit, even though I started to eat vegetables and change my life in 2001, I still didn't really comprehend why I wasn't getting any better. I started to realize that even though you eat vegetables and organic foods, if you eat fats and salt, you aren't going to lose the weight. In 2002, I mustered up the willpower to go on a diet. I was doing fabulously and eating right. Most of the food that was entering my mouth was low carb and low sodium and I was exercising regularly. I looked at the scale, and I lost over seventy pounds. Then there were some traumatic things that began to happen in my life, and all of that work and willpower seemed to be flushed down the toilet. I fell off the wagon big time, and all that work was washed away in less than a year. It was heartbreaking and I never looked in a mirror so that I could remain in denial. After all of that happened, my husband and I got everything together and moved down to where we are living at this point.

Because of all of the crap I was going through, I decided to seek a therapist. I figured, what could it hurt. I decided that, since I was doing the whole therapy thing, I might as well go back to dieting. This time, rather than doing the whole healthy eating approach through cooking low carb and making those type of food choices, I would do the frozen food and pre-packaged food approach. I did this for a whole Summer and part of the Autumn when I first moved in 2006. I had quit smoking and I was happy about that, but it made everything with the diet endeavor very difficult. I fought through it and eventually lost over fifty-six pounds. The weird thing is that when you get to certain point in your dieting, you begin to think that you are strong enough to overcome the fat gene. You think that just because you had problems with bad food choices in the past, doesn't mean that they will affect you when you become healthy. That is absolutely ridiculous and delusional, and I have deluded myself more often that you may think. After all of that work, that diet failed miserably. It was then that I read in a 2008 survey by the American Diabetic Association, that out of eight-hundred adults, seventy-three percent said they aren't improving their diets because they do not want to give up their favorite food items. Seventy-nine percent of the 800 adults are satisfied with how they are eating. That's when I realized that pushing myself into packaged foods wasn't curing anything.

Today, I have been trying my best to just eat the best I can. I don't eat with heavy portions and I stay active. I'm trying to cut out high sodium food, but keep with high flavor. I've been doing a great job so far. Sometimes I have my issues, but I am still learning this lifestyle. I was proud of myself the other night. I went to a wine and cheese party, and I stuck to eating vegetables without the cheese. I had a couple glasses of wine and a boatload of water. I know it won't be easy and there will be days where I will fall off of the wagon, but I'll just jump back on and keep going. I figure if I can keep going on the diet even if I slip up here and there, at least I will have a constant plan. I think that was part of my mistake with most of the other diets that I was trying. Rather than choosing to just eat healthy, I was choosing no-carbs, pre-packaged, or points. I just want to make sure I'm happy with my life and I think that is the most important thing. I don't think that eating from a box is going to make your life any easier. I don't know where this road will lead me, but I'm very excited to see how things will turn out. I have to say that is the most dramatic difference between every other plan I've ever had.