The Journey Begins — Again

The situation has gotten out of control.

I’ve always been a big person, but I’ve never really felt fat. I’ve always been able to hold my own as a big girl when getting around and doing whatever I wanted.

Lately, things have changed. I feel myself slowing down, can’t do as much as I used to. I get tired doing simple things. One of my friends says it’s age. Some of it probably could be attributed to that, but the extra weight is the primary source.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and the five block walk home almost killed me. I actually had to stop and rest for a minute. After I got home, you would have thought that I did a workout the way I was sweating. NOT GOOD. Yes the bags were kind of heavy, but I should not have been sweating like I was.

I had been toying with the idea of writing about this on my blog for a couple of months. I read a lot of blogs and always find it interesting when people share their lives. However, I have this privacy thing which means that every detail won’t be on this blog. Just the highlights.

I turn 40 next May (2009) and I really don’t want to be the typical 40 year old couch potato. NYC and my life is waaaaay too exciting for that. However, I think I’m headed down that road and it’s time for a drastic change. Hence the new category, Faboulous & Fit.

Here’s a before picture. It was taken last year but I pretty much look the same. (Nah, I’m lying, my face is fatter. At least it looks that way in the mirror.)

I was inspired to blog this morning because of a comment I read on a website about losing weight. It was something that should help me keep things in perspective on this journey. The article was on maintaining weight loss. It was titled 4 Reasons We Regain Weight so you know it was a must read.

When you’re my size, you can lose weight fairly easy, but keeping it off and not have the scale go up and down every week is the challenge.

The gist of the article is that in order to maintain long term weight loss, you need to do the following:

1. Participate in aerobic exercise for least one hour or more each day
2. Focus on watching calories
3. Keep food logs
4. Choose healthier and lower fat foods

I’m going to start with #4 this week. Choosing healthier, lower fat foods. I plan on keeping some sort of food diary. In the past, I’ve used FitDay.com, but I would get lazy or tired of entering food into the database.

FitDay.com is excellent for giving you a reality check about what you’re eating and how many calories things are. I noticed a trend when I would use it. First, I was always amazed at how many calories things were when you factor actual serving size vs. normal American serving size.

I think I may just use the blog as a food log. I’ll just write things down, no counting calories or anything. Just the facts.