Reality Sets In

I guess I was just floating around on wishful thinking. I kept thinking that my weight would just level out. I would stop gaining and stay at some weight and learn to live with it. What that weight was I had no idea, but I kept on eating, waiting. After 7 days of keeping track of my calories I realized (duh) that I would just keep gaining weight until my gigantic body mass required the same number of calories that I ate every day to sustain itself. Wow - I could have grown really huge - probably well over 300 lbs.

I didn’t actually ever bother to count the calories I was eating, but I’m guessing they were somewhere between 3000 - 4000 calories per day. How do I know? Well, for one thing, I’m eating under 2000 calories on NutriSystem - about 1700 - 1800 calories per day. I can guess the calories because the food I eat is about 25% - 50% of what I normally eat. I keep track in a widget I have on my google home page. I have no idea if it’s scientific and correct, (fatsecret.com) but I like it and it works for me - it has everything already in there with all the nutritional info. It calculates how many calories I burn each day - I supposed based on body weight. It counts sleeping and resting and I add in my walks. I burn about 2800 calories per day just existing - according to the widget.

This is a life long change if I want to keep the weight off. I guess I was hoping for some magic pill, miracle cure for obesity. I worry about doing this all over again and again. It was pretty easy to lose 50 lbs last time - the phenteramine helped quite a bit. Keeping it off was out of my reach. This time, I need to change permanently. Does that mean I can never eat yummy stuff again? No. Does it mean I can never pig out and eat so much I can’t move? No. It means that every day is a new day. And it’s the long rung that counts - just like the stock market - peaks and valleys.

Losing the weight is just the beginning, keeping it off will be the journey. I am making a weightloss journal this time - with photos and measurements. I was inspired by Cathy Zielske and her journal. I’ll post some pages in a few months when I’ve made some progress, the first photo is very unflattering.

Here is a dorky photo of me sitting here writing my blog with my new glasses…

new glasses