Welcome!

Welcome! You can tell by my title that I am a) overweight, b) a mother (of 2), c) married for 10 years...planning an anniversary trip. I also love to blog! I have a family blog and have always loved writing. I can't figure out a single way to lose even 1 pound, so I'm trying blogging about it! We shall see! I hope you'll come with me and maybe things I say will help you, too! If nothing else, I hope you can relate and maybe even laugh a little along the way.



My story, you ask? I'm in my early thirties, I live in the south and married my husband in 1999. I am...to put it bluntly...fat. Over the past 10 years, I have gained about 80+ pounds. I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old (we'll call them Sam and Taylor for fun) who take every bit of my spare time. We own our own small business and with this economy, that comes with it's own stresses. I used to be thin. I was always an athletic, try-everything-once kind-of girl. I went to a large University where I walked to class everyday, regardless of how far it was. When my husband and I started dating, we went on trips, found places to hike, played different sports together and were just very active. Eventually, life slowed down. He went to grad school several hundred miles away, I had to get serious about finishing my undergraduate degree and we just stopped being as active as we were. Somehow, I didn't gain weight until after the wedding, but I feel like it was almost immediately. I never gained the "freshman 15" and maybe gained 10 pounds the entire time I was in college. After I got married was a totally different story. It was winter. He was still in school. Life was S L O W. We had a routine, which included him studying late, me working late and the most activity we got was walking in the park with our dog. At least we had that or I surely would have blown up. The first year of our marital bliss I think I gained about 20 pounds. They checked my thyroid among a dozen other reasons the weight could have come on so fast. I never wanted to admit that all the walking and random activity prior to the wedding was really what was keeping any weight off to begin with. Life hasn't really sped up much since then. I continued to gain weight and then I got pregnant nearly 5 years ago. I only gained 27 pounds with my first child, but I only lost 7 pounds. I still had 20 pounds to lose when, less than a year later, I found out I was pregnant again. Once again, I only gained 28lbs and lost 8!! What?!? How does that happen that I can NOT shed 20lbs from each pregnancy????

I will say I tried everything, before and after. I had some success with Susanne Somers, but before I had kids. It was a difficult program to follow but I was able to do it because of my lack of responsibility to children. Then I tried Weight Watchers 3 times. Once before pregnancy and twice, once after each baby. Everyone just kept telling me how much THEY lost on WW. It never happened to me. I eat relatively well. I LOOOOVE my sweets of course, but eating isn't the worst of my problems, it's stress and the lack of activity. I MUST get moving!!!!! But where, oh where, is that time hiding?

I assume everyone has this problem. And of course I can't find the self-respect, the self-restraint, or anything else you need to jump-start any program. My goal is to be one of "those" people that can just decide one day to do better. To come up with some kind of routine that works, not an official program, to find the time to work out at some point in my day, everyday. I must be active everyday.

That is my goal. Here I go...