Hi, My Name is Leslie and I am on a Diet!

So generally when I go on a diet I don’t tell anyone because I feel it is a waste of time since I don’t want to be embarrassed when I gain the weight back. Well here I am to break my trend.

Hi, I am Leslie and I am on a Diet. I have lost 20 pounds as of last night and plan to lose another 60 before I go into my maintenance phase.

To say I am not a fan of Diets is most likely the understatement of the century. Back in April I was over a friend’s house that I frequent and hopped onto his bathroom scale. I then quickly jumped off the scale appalled to see it register in at 252 pounds. Years ago I was up to290 pounds and knew I had to do something. I started going to the gym and in the process dropped 70 pounds down to 220. Over the past few years I have gradually gained back 32 of those pounds. Now I know how unhappy I can be when I gain weight and I knew I had been eating badly. You see up to January 2006 I had been gradually losing since I moved to Seattle. It was VERY gradual as I had only lost 12 pounds over the course of 18 months but hey I wasn’t gaining weight, right? Well in December of 2005 my older brother moved in with me. This has been a wonderful thing as we are best friends and had not seen each other in several years. Well in the process of him moving in I started to eat foods that he was eating. So here I was regaining all the weight I had worked to keep off.

That day back in April I made a decision, I had to stop eating the bad foods and do something. I started using my crock pot more frequently and eating more the way I like to. Veggies and meat with some rice and pasta on occasion, it was working ok. My jeans were beginning to feel less tight. As I started losing weight I started to think that maybe I should really do something. Over the years I have made many excuses about not dieting and exercising. One of my main excuses was my knees. I scheduled an appointment with an Orthopedist and finally went in to have my knees examined. In spite of being told years ago that I would need surgery this new doctor sent me to a physical therapist. 6 weeks later and I am now done with my therapy and I feel great. With that excuse out of the way and not really any other legitimate excuse I started investigating dieting websites. While doing this I asked around to people that have lost weight. After examining plans and websites I logged onto diet.com. Their theory is a little different from most. You don’t crash diet only eating grapefruit and bacon. You aren’t required to give up any particular foods. This is my #1 issue with diets. I am a rebellious spirit at heart and if you tell me I am not allowed to do or eat something I will fight you regardless if I didn’t really care about the thing, simply because I was told not to. Now this is something I know about myself and work to change but it is a part of who I am.

Diet.com is a few years old from what I can tell. Once you join the site you have access to a Doctor, Registered Dietitian and a forum full of supportive members that are where you are or have been there. Once on the site you take a little test that helps determine your personality. There are 3 parts: your eating personality, your exercise personality and your coping personality. Depending on your answers it determines what your personality type is.

I am a:

Eating Personality: Swing Eater
Exercise Personality: All or Nothing
Coping Personality: Doubtful Dieter

Let’s look at what this means.

Swing Eater

I am either doing REALLY good or REALLY bad. I eat well most of the time but on occasion I binge. Think of it as a pendulum.

All or Nothing:

When it comes to my exercise program I do all of it or nothing. If I can’t hire the personal trainer and torment my body several hours a week I give up and sit at my computer for days on end only moving to get something to eat or go to the bathroom.

Doubtful Dieter:

This is the most accurate description I have ever heard. Boy Howdy am I a doubtful dieter. I step on the scale and even if I have lost 3 pounds I can not believe it. Not to mention I am at a 20 pound loss now (about ¼ of what I hope to lose) and I am beginning to go through the “Well now I am actually losing it but I could never actually maintain this the rest of my life.” Why do I doubt? Well let’s see. When I was 11 yrs old I went on my first diet. Since then I have been on dozens of different diets. Not to mention my Aunt and Mother and Cousins and their dieting lack of success. I have watched several members of my family struggle with weight loss for decades. 20 years later and I am still struggling with mine. How on EARTH could anyone actually lose the weight they need to lose and keep it off? Well that’s a doubtful dieter. I am working every moment of every day to change this thought process.

Once I get home I will post some before pictures. I plan to take a new picture about every other week. Hopefully we will see some progress. 20 pounds down 60 to go.