My Story II

Ok, so after finally convincing husband we needed to get out of the city we started looking for places.  He got a state farm paper and started looking at the real estate ads. I scoured our area as I would have been perfectly content with 20 acres, house, barn to put my horses.  Problem was cost.  Land prices were ridiculous and there was just no way we were going to swing that.

So for three years husband found cheap places and we'd take a weekend and drive to see them.  80 acres, house, barn for $35K.  Yes, I am talking cheap.  Basement was flooded but that is fixable.  I fell in love with one place, the land, but the house wasn't the best.  I still dream of that property it was that nice.  I could envision an organic goat dairy.  Husband wouldn't go for it though.  All he saw was the house.  It was livable and probably better than the one we are in now really.  But he didn't like it.

I was on my last nerve when it came to marriage, kids, job, inlaws when I came home from my job and he met me at the door with with the newspaper and announced he found a brick farm house (I like brick, a lot of the places around us were brick) on 100 acres for $49K.  I thought yah yah, whatever.  He convinced me to call the next day so I did.  Bad news, it was sold.  He said let's go see what we missed.  So I called the realtor again and asked if we could come see it.  Sure, come on up.  So we did.  Drove down a long dusty road, turned into a long overgrown driveway we had to bushwack through.  Turned the corner and there she was...a red brick farm house like I had never seen before.  It was love.  I told the lady next time they have one like this to call us. 

A week later she called and said it was on the market, financing fell through, we had 24 hours to make an offer.  We offered 50K and got it.  My dream of living on a farm of my own was about to come true.

My Story I

Along with food I am also addicted to Diet Pepsi.  Actually it started with TaB, remember that?  They still make it even but I can't get it where we live now.  When I lived in a city I could get it by the 2 liter bottle and once a week I would buy the store out.  I needed three 2 liters a day so yah, add it up.  I hid it in the house and hid the empties like an alcoholic hiding his stash.  I didn't want anyone to know how much I drank of it.  Why did I drink so much?  The carbonation filled me up.  I learned this at home when I still lived there.  If I drank a lot of carbonated soda I wouldn't be so hungry.  If I wasn't hungry I didn't have to listen to my father say "eating again?"  Mind you, I am nearly 6' tall and a the time weighed no more than 140#.  I worked hard all day in a nursing home then took care of my horses after.  But this set me up to start binging on the soda and eventually sneak to eat.  And of course it was nothing good because he'd see me.

Ok fast forward.  I was prego with number 2, had an infant, married to another child who would disappear all the time and still binging on the soda but this is when it got the worst.  I was lonely, isolated, had no friends with children (plus really, I don't like kids so never had any real friends with kids), the friends I did have abandoned me and we lived in a neighborhood of retired persnickity people who were more worried about how things LOOKED (case in point, my clothesline behind my house that no one could see unless they went behind my house) than actually allowing anyone to just live there.  My neighbor blamed my two kids for everything and had a fit if their tricycles touched their driveway etc.  It was like living under a critical microscope so I learned to stay inside and stuff it down with food and soda.

I gained 60# with my first kid. I asked my Dr. if I was gaining too much and she said "Oh no, enjoy it, it'll come off".  First one born I weight 220#.  Well, here I am 22 years later "enjoying" it still!!!  I then got pregnant right away and added to it.  By the time all is said and done I am AT LEAST 100# overweight.  I don't recall what my upper level ideal is but I am almost positive it isn't 180#.

So yah, we moved to the farm.  I thought oh good, freedom to be outside, work to be done, grow my own food etc.  Well, in the end it didn't exactly work that way. I'll go into that in another post.

In The Beginning...

I was one of the lucky ones.  Up until I turned 28 I could eat what I want when I wanted and not gain an ounce.  Then I got pregnant and it was all downhill from there.  Now, 100+ pounds later I am at the health crossroads.  Staring 50 in the face and also all the fun things that come with being overweight and over fifty.  Frankly it scares me but not enough to make me change.  Not while there are cookies, cakes, pizza etc. right there right now.  Yes, instant gratification wins every time.

For my 49th birthday I joined Weight Watchers for the first time.  It wasn't a good time to start.  Why? Because from the day I joined there were rumors of the program changing, getting better. So why learn the old one if there is a new one?  So I coasted along with my usual 5-10# weight gains and losses.  The ladies would celebrate the 5# loss and I was like "who cares, it'll be back tomorrow while I sleep".  I have gained and lost that same 5# more times than I can count.

So the new program came and so did winter. My closest meeting place is 1/2 hour drive. It takes me longer to drive there than to be there and in -20 degrees, 4 feet of snow through a National forest at night I will say I am not going to the meetings right now. Additionally I find their website a bore.  But as I sit here and eat cookies I don't even like, pop an antacid and then drink my six bottles of Diet Pepsi which would give me heartburn if I didn't take the antacid, I decide things have got to change.

I have no clue what I weigh.  My scale is off I discovered at my first WW meeting as I was 285 which about floored me.  Last weigh-in which was two weeks after Christmas I was 273 I think which is more my normal.

Anyway, I plan to use this blog to explore why I eat, what gets in my way.  My mind (games), body (betrayal of hormones), spirit (or lack there of).

I just bought the newest WW cookbook and as I looked at the recipes and thought "this looks good" I'd then see I get a whole 1/2 cup!  Wow!  A half cup!  I could feel myself choking up, pissed that I only would get a half cup.  Pissed that I can eat so much and not feel full at all.  Pissed that I am where I am at.  I want to blame everyone but myself.  And it is myself that got me here.  I lack the willpower to not eat the trash my husband drags home. I wait too long and then buy trash myself.  I plan my day on what trash I can eat when.  Sometimes I go shopping and really what I want is to eat out.  When I do then I sit in the car and think why am I here? Drive all this way to eat a hamburger?  Ridiculous. But I do.