My Intro - Very long

[Guest guest]

Hello Everyone!

I prefer to be called by my middle name, so Ann it is. I am 54, married and have a grown daughter with 3 wonderful boys, one passed away and one on the way. Due nest August and I get to be there! (Mini goal - to be as close to 200 as I can by then - cause we are talking Hawaii!!!!). I knit, sew (on an old hand crank) love film noir, baroque music, samba and Sinatra. I read a lot, adore historical costuming and would love to live in the past! lol. I am apple shaped, wear my hair in a bun or crown braid.

Never had a weight problem as a child, started to gain weight as a teen and have been up and down between 147 and 290 several times. I would say that about half of my adult life I have been a normal weight, half I have been obese. When I did take of the weight, I was able to stabilize for years at a time, but eventually the weight came back, so slowly it was hardly noticed. I was always in a diet/binge cycle. This time around, I have been obese for the last 10 years.

I've done most of the diets out there, - my best feel-good diet has always been low carb, and my best chance at significant loss has always been old fashioned calorie counting, and with my metabolism, it has to be under 1200. And I mean under, not at or around. lol. I eat whole foods when I can, I believe in keeping the natural fats in food, so I won't touch any food that has the fat taken out, I try to eat as wholesome as I can, but diet Pepsi still has me wrapped around it’s artificial finger. I lean towards salty and crunchy and could care less about sweet. Creamy, though has a hold on me. Whipped cream, sour cream and puddings/custards.....well, lets not go there.

It's hard to make long stories short (and this is my 5th revision!) but I will try once again. Husband and I got caught in the recession in the fall of 2008, both losing our jobs at the same time. That happens when you work at the same place! We sold our house and took up trucking. We live full time in an 18 wheeler. With all it's discomforts and rough times, we are blessed by not have to go through the heartbreak of losing our home to foreclosure (we sold within 3 months), being totally debt free and have a savings that is growing like never before.

I mention trucking because there are lots of challenges I face in my efforts to lose weight. I can only use a restroom 2-3 times a day, so I cannot drink much water. We have limited ability to store food, using a very small fridge and a few cubby holes. We cook in small lunch box size ovens that are slow cookers, so when we don't know a driving schedule, it can take 3 hours before a meal is ready. Worst of all, there is NO exercise. We are long haulers, driving 10-12 hours a day. We are on the road 5-6 weeks at a time, with 4-5 days off (called home-time) where we stay at my parents home and relax. The job is 24/7 most of the time. Sigh. It's often uncomfortable, extremely bouncy and it is definitely a man's world. I swear I will wear nothing but ruffles and pink when I am done with this! lol. Anyways, I have managed to lose 43 pounds without exercise and I feel so much better, words cannot even describe it.

I reached my all time highest weight last summer, 307 pounds. I could hardly move. I had been able to keep my weight around 290-298 for 10 years, but the stress of selling our first home, losing jobs and my daughter moving to Hawaii, well, I lived on super frosted cupcakes, chips and dip and lots of brandy! When I joined my husband on the truck, I could hardly move. Getting use to the new lifestyle at my age was a real eye opener. In late August, I had a really bad accident that shock some sense into me. I was walking across the truck stop parking lot and tripped on uneven pavement. It actually made me airborne, I landed chest/breast first into a high sharp edged curb. Yowza! It knocked the wind out of me so badly that I barked like a seal to intake air. Two young employees of the truck stop store were sitting at a table smoking, a few yards away. They watched me as I gasped and could not move. They did not offer any help. Two cars coming out of the burger drive through had to drive around me. What a world we live in. In front of an audience, I struggled to get my fat body off the curb and felt humiliation beyond anything I ever felt before. Well, there was that time I was sunbathing nude on the beach and a couple of teenage boys remarked that there was a beached whale.....

I had the worst bruising of my life and 5 months later, still lumps that haven't dissolved completely. That horribly helpless feeling of being so obese that I could not get up immediately, of being so obese that no one wanted to help, was more than I could bear. I decided enough was enough, I could change this. With a new and wonderful future ahead of us (we will have enough money to return home to Europe and buy a home again), it was time to let go of the fat and move forward without all the baggage. The accident could have happened at any other time and not have affected me in quite the same way, but this time, it was the catalyst to change. Vulnerability is something I don't do well.

I started calorie counting, 1300-1500 calories a day around the last of August of last year, but I consider Sept 1 as my start date. This month I dropped the calories further as I ended up having an 8 week stall, fluctuating between 268 and 273 from Thanksgiving to just a week ago. While on the road, I am now eating about 900-1100 calories, on Home-time I eat about 1500-1800 calories, most of it because we add wine with dinner, and have brandy.

Ann HStarted 09/01/09307/264/155 poundsMy Weightloss Journal:http://threeherring.wordpress.com/