Many of you know that I have struggled for most of my life with compulsive eating and weight issues. I got my start way back in the 1960s, growing up with an overweight mother who watched my weight obsessively, long before there was anything to worry about. I was actually put on my first diet at age 9, when I weighed all of 70 lbs. dripping wet. When I was an athletic, 125-pound teenager, she made no secret of the fact that she was disappointed in me, and she would paw through my closet on the pretense of finding clothes I could no longer wear because I was such a pig ("Now that you're a size 7, I'm going to have to give all your size 5's to your older sister," she'd cluck disapprovingly). Then, when I was a young wife and mother who'd gained weight with my pregnancies, she actually APOLOGIZED for me to all of her friends. "You'll have to excuse Marla," one of them quoted her as saying, "she is HUGE and just can't get herself together".
However..............one can play the blame game only so long, and I've had to face the fact that the past 35 years or so of overeating are on me. Literally. I've alternately dieted and binged most of my life, until at one point last summer, I tipped the scales at 357 pounds. I'm not kidding. I was so heavy I couldn't walk more than a hundred feet, get dressed in the morning, or climb a flight of stairs without getting out of breath. Tying my shoes was out of the question (this must be why God invented Crocs shoes!). Personal care required contortions that I don't care to describe. My blood pressure averaged 190/110 even with three different medications. In addition, I'd already had a small stroke, was prediabetic and probably in early CHF as I had 2+ pitting edema and wheezing.
I probably should be dead. But God has been good, and I've been able to manage a modest weight loss (~30 pounds) over the past year by changing jobs and controlling my portions (at least some of the time). Hitting 50 this past winter, though, has brought me up against a harsh reality: I MUST lose weight. A lot of it. And I can't wait any longer for some miracle surgery or pill to rescue me..........my insurance won't even discuss paying for it, and I don't happen to have 40 grand laying around to pay for it myself.
You see, people on my side of the family die in their 50s and 60s, mainly from "lifestyle" diseases. I quit cigarettes in 1990 and booze a year later, but I'm still over 300 pounds. My BP is much better than it was five months ago, but at 146/77 it's still too high for good health. My fasting blood sugar is 109, my total cholesterol 200, but my triglycerides are 516..........an MI in the making.
So my doctor and I agreed that I would start out by losing 10% of my current weight over the next six months. I KNOW I can do that much. Actually, I'm aiming to drop 50 by the end of this year, which I think is doable even at my age. But I'm not going to think beyond that first 30 lbs or so right now; the only way I can look at the long term is by breaking the weight loss needed into incremental goals. I'm a pro at losing weight, I've lost literally hundreds of pounds over the course of my life. I know now that I have to add periodic treats so that I don't rebel against myself. But this has got to be a change of lifestyle rather than yet another "diet". The people on "The Biggest Loser" learn how to eat and how to move, all without surgery or pills; if they can do it, with less knowledge of nutrition and physiology than I possess, I ought to be able to as well.
This thread is intended as a help-and-support forum for anyone with overeating, food, and weight issues. I can't do this alone, and from some of the other threads I've read here, I know many, many other members are dealing with the same stinkin' problems I am. I think talking about these, along with the cooperation from my family that I've never had in all these years, just might make the difference between success and yet another failure. After all, it's said that once you "go public" with something, it's harder to give up knowing that other people are counting on you to keep it up and cheering you on. Who knows..........maybe we can help each other.
