So here's the scoop with my diet and exercise. I officially started my diet in July of 2001. I had started swimming and doing tae-kwon-do 6-8 months earlier in order to get my blood pressure down, which had crept up to the borderline between normal and high after I had started birth control pills. They had also caused me to gain 5 lb. or so, making me a hefty 208. I lost a few pounds by just exercising, but in July I decided to attack my weight problem more seriously. In three months I was down to a low of 180 lb., a total of 28 lb. lost. Around this time, which was the end of September, the weight loss began to stall. Personally, I think the stall had a lot to do with school. That semester I had my capstone (senior project) and was spending a lot of time on that, as well as my other 13 hours of engineering classes and my job. After that my father-in-law died, I got pregnant, had a miscarriage, graduated, and bought a house. During that time I lost and gained the same few pounds, getting down to a low of 178 and a high of 188.

Even though I haven't been losing weight for a while, I can tell that I've made permanant changes in my lifestyle, and that makes me feel good. I've almost completely stopped drinking soda. I pay more attention to what I put in my mouth. I eat my vegetables. I've switched to lower calorie or whole wheat versions of a lot of foods. I'm confident that I'll never go back to where I was.

Now that things are a bit more relaxed, I can start working on losing the weight again. Right now, for exercise, I'm trying to get more regular with my weightlifting again and doing things like ride my bike to work and take the dogs for walks. I'm having more trouble with controlling what I eat, though. I keep having terrible cravings, normally after I've just eaten. That has led me to believe that I need to be controlling my carbohydrate intake in order to prevent my blood sugar from jumping all over the place. I'm trying to keep my total carbohydrate intake (not counting dietary fiber) to 40% of my calories. Not only that, but I want to be getting more of that from vegetables, fruits, and whole grain products. This has the added benefit of increasing my protein intake, which is a good thing when you are weightlifting anyway.

Right now my goal is to be 170 by the end of September. That gives me about 8 weeks, which means I need to lose about 2 lb. a week. Weigh-ins are on Mondays.

Well, I've lost a pound so far. It's nice to have made a little progress. I've decided that I need to be eating more often. Lately my habit has been to practically starve myself throughout the day, and then I end up eating too much at night. I'm sure this also causes drastic changes in my blood sugar. So I've decided to have at least 5 meals a day. They will all be 200 calories, except for dinner, which will be 600 calories. I know I should probably spread my calories a bit more evenly, but I can't help wanting to have one bigger meal. I tried this over the weekend and I like it. Like other people who have tried this, though, I feel like I'm always eating, getting ready to eat, finishing eating, or fixing food, which is hard to get used to. Splitting things up like this also means that I've stopped keeping track of exactly what I've had to eat each day, which has been getting tiresome. This way I just need to make meals of the correct size, and I know I'm doing well.

The kitchen table finally got cleared up this weekend, so I've been sitting down at the table to eat my meals. I think that helps, because I can take the time to enjoy and pay attention to my food without other distractions. All in all, things have been going well.

I also did my first weightlifting session in a month this weekend. I had not done it in a while since we had been on vacation, and since then I've just had a hard time getting back in to it. I've been having hives for the past five weeks, and about the only thing you can do about them if you can't figure out the cause (which I can't), is take antihistamines. They have made me so drowsy, it's hard to get going on anything. I had to take a lot of breaks, but I got it done. Since it's been a while, my legs are very sore and I feel like an old woman hobbling around the place. Gotta love those squats.

There's some people at church thinking about doing a weight loss bible study, which I am excited about. They are probably going to do some special program where you have to buy kits for $60. I don't care for the idea of that very much, since I think that what I'm doing now is working better for me than anything else would, so I probably won't do that with them, but either way I'll be glad to have some support and inspiration in real life. So far all of that has come from the internet, which is really great, but nothing can beat having some people around you who are in the same boat. My husband also wants to lose weight, but he is very busy and doesn't have much time to spend on it. I'm mostly really hoping that I can find some people to exercise with, since I think that will make it that much more fun.

I really really want to get into shape. That has certainly become as important of a thing to me as losing the weight. I've never really considered myself to be a particularly athletic person, probably because athletics always seemed to be associate with team sports, not to mention the fact that I am not very coordinated. I'm coming to see that there are so many more ways to define athletic. Whatever you call it, there's this person I keep seeing that I want to be. A person who has a healthy body, and can do all the things she wants to do with it. I can't wait to be that person.

The loss wasn't so big this week, but I'm still happy that it went down. I'm not suprised that it didn't go down so much, though, as my husband and I had bad weekend as regards to eating. We just celebrated our 2nd anniversary, so we have an excuse. :) I was going to start working on a 10 week program that ends with being able to run 30 minutes. I went on my first run and really enjoyed it. However, I recently fell down the stairs outside my office and reinjured the big toe on my right foot (previously injured in a biking incident). This means that I'm going to be limping for a while, and probably won't even be able to go on a lot of walks for a while. I'm really dissapointed about this. I was just beginning to get back into exercising again, and now I've got another thing holding me back. I can still work on my weightlifting, though, so it's not a total loss.

Also, I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but I've been having problems with hives for about 6 weeks now. It turns out in these cases that they rarely ever find a cause, but either way I've decided to go on a elimination diet for a week or two so that I can rule out any food allergies. This is not going to be fun. I can't have milk products, wheat products, corn products, a lot of kinds of meat, etc. However, with such a limited number of choices, I'm sure I'll be able to lose a few pounds.

I planted my garden in June, which is rather late, so I'm just starting to get my first harvest now. Zucchini! I love zucchini. I've been picking some of them when they are really small, and eating them raw. Others I've let grow, and they are fantastic steamed. It's great to have fresh vegetables. I'm glad I didn't let the lateness of the date set me off from planting some things. I'm sure that soon I'll have to start giving lots of them away, though, since zucchini plants are supposed to be really prolific.

Well, I lost two pounds last week, so I guess I'm on track. Some of that seems to have come back lately, though, but somehow I think that part of that is due to the hives. I think that when they are really bad, I retain water or something like that. Or I could just have gained a lot of weight.

The exercise definitely has not been going well lately. I'm so sick of limping around everywhere I go. Things have actually improved greatly on the toe front lately, though. If I wear very comfortable shoes I can almost walk normally. That's a big relief, since the muscles that hold my toe up and out of harm's way were beginning to get pretty sore.

The diet for getting rid of the hives didn't really seem to do much, but I guess that wasn't much of a surprise since while they do say it is cause that is most often discovered, they still don't figure out the cause in 90% of the cases. What a pain. I'm also tired of itching all the time.

I guess I'll try to get some before and midway pictures up today, since that is what people always like to look at. I've never taken any official ones, so I'll just have to find some random ones that aproximate certain weights.

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Today is the first day that my toe felt good enough to attempt running again. It went pretty well considering the fact that I'm still not in very good shape. I did get a cramp in my foot and I only finished 24 of the 30 minutes, but at least it's something.

Well, to conclude, I didn't make too much progress in August and September, with a total of only a pound lost. That's ok, I've been doing better lately. Go on to the First Place section to see how I'm doing there.