One of the reasons I have really committed to this lifestyle change revolves around a doctor's appointment I had a few months ago. I hadn't been in forever because, well, I didn't really want to hear about how I don't take care of myself. But I was really feeling crappy and I knew I needed to get back on my antidepression medication. Anyway, I had to return to the office after the results of my blood tests came back. Turns out my blood sugar was really high. Shocking, considering the amount of Coke I drank. I tested right below full blown diabetes. My mother had the same type of discussion with her doctor a few years ago and didn't take it seriously and was diagnosed with it last year. Of course, she is in her fifties and I am only 27. Needless to say, I was pretty frightened. My doctor originally tried to put me on a very restrictive diet. I let her know that wasn't going to work because all it did was make me run to Burger King after three days of baked chicken and broccoli. I took it upon myself to find healthier foods that I liked and ways to cook the good stuff that I didn't really like in an interesting way. I have done that and I am amazed at the amount of veggies I can eat in a sitting now.

Something I have noticed lately, though, is that, while I am choosing healthier foods, I am still stuffing my face until I am so full I can hardly move. I total up my calories and they end up being below my max but it seems I am getting them in two meals instead of breaking them out during the day. I don't understand why I can't just put half of my sandwhich down and eat a few hours later. I mean, I get bored and hungry and want to eat. Wouldn't it make more sense to save some food for later so I get to eat when I feel the need without being a glutton about it? Yes, it would. But I can't seem to get around that. I mean, I have to force myself to not eat everything on my plate. Literally say "Amber, stop eating. Put the fry down!"

Am I crazy? Does anyone else have this issue? If so, how do you deal with it? I am thinking about hiring someone to smack me around when I eat more than I should in one sitting. That might get expensive, thought.

My first week back on WW I was a little half-assed about sticking to my points but I lost 2.4 pounds. All righty then. Now the trick will be to not slack off as soon as my jeans fit better.

And a newsflash for WW folks: if you buy those Just Two Points! bars (tiny as hell but some are pretty tasty), you oughta stock up this week because they're raising the price from $3.95 to $4.50 a box. FOUR-FIFTY for that shit! Gay Jack warned us at the meeting tonight. Which is just why we love Gay Jack.

From here on out, one of you has to be in charge of reminding me on a weekly basis to NOT skip Spin class EVER AGAIN.

Yeah -- when you go two weeks without doing it you wind up feeling like you're about to collapse as soon as you sit. It probably didn't help that I ran a mile and lifted weights before the class, but I usually did that. I'm so tired!

I'm so happy to see so many of you posting and participating. It really is very exciting to see how you all approach your health and fitness goals, as well as your feelings about health, fitness, and weight-loss overall. I didn't know how successful this would be, but I'm glad to see so many of you using it. Whoo hoo!

Congratulations to all of you LTB members who are kicking ass and taking names! I'm so proud of you guys!

We're fucking rock stars, people. ROCK. STARS.

Is anyone else having trouble getting into FitDay? I keep getting connection errors. And it's really frustrating because I want to get in there and write down that I removed two more pounds this week, and stuff, and I can't!!

So I had to write it here, instead.

I spend a lot of time surfing other weight loss journals when things get slow at work and I came across one for a woman who had WLS and it really depressed me. First of all, from what I can gather, she didn't weigh much more than I do now when she had the surgery. I would *never* even think about doing it now. At about 220, I am certainly overweight but I can't imagine a Doctor suggesting or even agreeing to giving me surgery. She is Canadian and had it done while the surgery was covered by insurance. From what I can gather, that is not the case anymore.

The really sad thing about it is that most of her before entries are all about how can't wait for the year to be over so she can have her surgery and everything will be wonderful. The quick fix is so seductive that people don't even realize they are risking their lives for it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I wish for a magic wand that I can just pass over myself and all my troubles are gone but I would certainly be very skeptical if you handed me one. Life is never easy, even when it is good. And what happens with the euphoria of all the weight being gone goes away? Sure, you are thinner but are you happier? I mean, I don't really like myself much now and it isn't just because of my weight. If I wiggled my nose and tomorrow I had Britney Spears' body, I still don't think I would be a happy person.

I am kind of babbling here but I am sure you can find a point in there somewhere. Oh, and if you want to read the journal I am referring to, it is here.

Oh, one more thing! Check out TVGuide's Poll for today: Which actress most needs to gain five pounds this holiday season? Are they kidding? Am I the only one that is disgusted by that?!? Yes, I think that Brittany Murphy has lost too much weight for it to be healthy but to make that a poll? It's like, no matter what women do, they can't get it right. Too fat, too thin, too short, too tall. We will find some way to make you feel unworthy. Jeez.

Something I wanted to share with all of you: a little graphical ass-kicking.

Time to -- heh -- weigh in on the topic.

Throughout the course of my life, the most I've had to lose at any given point was 50 pounds. Sometimes a little more, but usually not by much. Well, wait, I take that back. I hit the scales at 200 in college, but it was a quick weight gain and I subsequently dropped 60 pounds after being that big for a month or so. I don't remember it much.

Having said that, I've never been a canididate for such a drastic procedure. While I don't think my personal struggle with weight is dimished by virtue of "not having as much to lose" as someone who would qualify for gastric bypass, I can't say I even have the slightest clue as to how a person in that situation feels. But, [And Robyn, I hope you'll forgive me here for dropping you and your husband's names], but I can't help but look at Fred and Robyn and see how they could have taken that route but didn't. Nope. They got off of their asses and transformed their lives.

I mean, HAVE YOU ALL SEEN FRED? It blows my fucking mind to think that he was twice the size he is now and all he did WAS EAT RIGHT AND EXERCISE. And Robyn talks about "halfway decent shape" but she could kick all of our asses with her pinky toe. And it's because she's been working from the get-go. She didn't get her stomach reduced to the size of a walnut and THEN worked at it. No.

Anyway ...

My Aunt Kathy has always been a large woman. Large probably puts it mildly, actually. When I began having panic attacks in April, and was then examining why they were happening, she sent me the most heartfelt emails about how I needed to take chances with my life and to be true to my heart. She said that she has suffered from depression so severly she almost took her life on two occassions. "I deal with my problems by turning to food, Erin. Don't end up like me."

Not a month later, she joined Weight Watchers, works out three times a week AND she now WORKS at the gym she started working out in, and she's lost 70 pounds. She has NEVER lost that much. Like Fred, she developed adult-onset diabetes. While it isn't under control, it's getting there and she's nowhere near as sick as she once was. She looks amazing and feel so good about what she's done and what she has left to do. She jokes about us being the "Weight Watcher Family." It's actually pretty cool.

I know I could never do it. Even if I did gain large amounts of weight. I know too much now. I know what my body can do. I know what I can do once I set my mind to do it. That said, I stepped on the scale at the gym tonight and went to set it to what I weighed in with last week and it made a very large "THUNK" to the right. I had to set the bar two pounds LOWER to get it to even out.

Maybe I WILL be in tight jeans and stilletos by summer after all ...

So I went back to WW last week for the first time since early spring. I'm a few more pounds than I was a year ago, but I still weigh less than I did this time 2 years ago, so I guess I'm OK. I have been pretty half-assed about sticking with my points this week though. God. I know this stuff works, so why am I having such a hard time getting going?

In slightly related news this is a really cool article that manages to say a lot of interesting things about both the weight-loss industry and also the size-acceptance movement. But a related article also mentions that a fat-acceptance organization is planning on suing Weight Watchers, and I have to say I was taken aback by that. I think I agree with the basic premise of the suit--that a lot of the diet industry depends on failure to make a profit--but I don't think WW is the most appropriate target for this for a lot of reasons. For one they just don't represent the weight-loss industry the way that, say, Philip Morris represents the tobacco industry. I'd love to hear other folks' thoughts on this!

Thanks for the welcome, Wendy. I go by amberlynne in most other places, the yoyo is just my site alias. I kind of like being called yoyo, though. Heh.

I have to agree about the surgery. I don't think it is ever something I would even consider. I have always had this belief that one day, I am going to get this whole living healthy thing and to think that I would become so desperate that I would elect to have surgery is just, well, frightening and sad. I am more inspired by Al Roker than I am about the Wilson woman, though. She makes me want to smack her for some reason. But Al, well, I dunno. I read some articles on him and I guess that if you get to your fifties and you have spent most of your life trying to lose weight and haven't been unsuccessful, surgery seems like a really good idea. And he is very open about the dangers of it and stuff.

I finally got my blog up and running with no further runs to the drive thru! I am hoping that the more places I have to talk about my issues, the easier they will be to deal with. Check it out: Yoyogurl's Marvelous Makeover Memoir

Welcome, YoYo! I rejoined WW last week and I'll be posting here a little more soon about how all that's going.

I have some pretty strong feelings about the weight loss surgery issue. My mom had TWO stomach-stapling operations done back in the 1980s (this was a precursor to the current type of surgery that's being done; the long-term success rate wasn't as good as the current procedure). She had a lot of complications, and with all the health problems she has now I wonder if years of being unable to digest food normally have had her toll on her. I wrote about this on Pound a while ago and I got several emails from people whose doctors had told them to consider weight loss surgery--people who didn't feel they were all that fat; who could walk and exercise but who happened to be somewhere over 200 lbs.

I'm against the surgery and think it's a "lazy option," though I tend to think it's more the health care industry who's being
lazy; a lot of the people who get it seem to be desperate and apparently feel they have little control over their own bodies, which is sad. And even worse, I think that sense of powerlessness is becoming more and more typical these days in a time where you actually have to go out of your way to exercise and eat well; where just going with the flow of mainstream culture seems to be contributing to weight problems.

Moreover I just think there's something fundamentally wrong with a procedure that leaves people unable to eat more than a few spoonfuls of food at a time. I think as far as "weight related health problems" go, I really have trouble imagining problems that would diminish my quality of life to such an extent that eating miniscule portions and suffering vitamin deficiencies and constrantly risking insulin shock would be an acceptable trade-off. And I guess it bothers me how much people feel this is acceptable, as if somehow one doesn't deserve to eat like a normal person once they have gotten too fat.

I'll respect an individual's decision to have the surgery if they know what they're getting into and know that it isn't an easy way out. On a larger scale, though, I'm opposed to the surgery because I think it's simply the medical industry meeting a demand without considering what caused the demand in the first place.

So, I have been reading Wendy's site for a long time and since my new job has been rather slow lately, I have spent a lot of time at many of the sites you guys have created. I finally stopped procrastinating and decided to get my own blog to track my progress. Of course, I got really frustrated when I was setting it up and I ended up at Wendy's (the fast food joint, not the lovely Wendola's) at 12:30am for a burger. The coldest, nastiest burger I think I have ever had, so I think that might have been a little sign.

I bought the December issue of Shape on a whim and it talks about how when you decide to start making changes "tomorrow", you have a tendency to binge beforehand, as some sort of last hurrah, which leads to all the starting over and gaining more weight, etc. At first, I was like "duh" but then I realized that I do that all. the. time. I tell myself I am going to start eating better and then I go out and buy a bunch of my favorite foods and gorge myself on them a few days before my "plan" is supposed to start. This, of course, leads to a lot of guilt and just feeling physically gross to the point where I don't have the energy or the desire to do anything but lay around. Just another nasty cycle that I have to break, I guess.

Anyway, I am so glad I was invited to be a part of this group. You all are very inspring to me and I plan on following in your footsteps. Tomorrow, of course. ;)

I can't believe how quiet it is around here.

Damn all of you for having lives. All of you!

I swear I will post some things later this week. I have been on the fucking computer all day and I'm still done returning emails.

ANyone have anything that they want to share? Any Al Roker comments? Erik noticed an article on him and mentioned it as he was lamenting the weight he wants to lose.

"Man, that guy looks great!"

"Dude, he had that same stomach operation as Carnie Wilson."

"Oh."

I don't know how you all feel about elective surgery as a weight-loss tool. Me? I'm against it. For all sorts of reasons. How do you feel?

Hey you guys. Things have been pretty quiet around here. Hope everybody's doing well and surviving December.

Up to seven miles today - it was nice (~40°), so I did them outside. It'll probably be the last time I manage that between now and Disney.