What comes next??

If you've been following my blog (which I know I have been slacking on updating) you will know that I was overweight as a child & teenager. When I graduated from high school I weighed 280 pounds, that was my all time heaviest. At the age of 19, I begun my weight loss journey and even though I have lost a total of 132 pounds it hasn't happened all at once. It has been a looooong 11 years. When I first started losing weight at 19 (in the year 2000) I went from 280 pounds to 200 pounds and that is where I stayed until I got married in 2004. At that time, I just focused on portion control, making healthy choices & walking for exercise and the weight basically just fell right off. After I got married, I decided I wanted to try losing some more weight, so I joined Weight Watchers and got down to 163 pounds. I never really got to enjoy that sucess because soon after, I found out I was pregnant with my first child. 3 pregnancies later along with a pregnancy induced under active thyroid, I was back up to 235 pounds in June 2010 when my daughter (my youngest & last child) was born. Now that I was done with kids, there were no more excuses! I had to lose the weight one last time and then work on maintaining that healthy lifestyle & weight for the rest of my life. I joined weight watchers for a 2nd time in July 2010. It took me about a year to go from 235 pounds to 165 pounds (70 pounds lost), but it was pretty easy & I steadily lost atleast a pound or more a week. Since then, it has been a struggle every single day. I've managed to lose another 17 pounds by doing it on my own using MFP, but it has taken me almost 15 months just to lose those 17 pounds. And I still have another 8-10 pounds that I would like to lose, but have begun to think that it will never happen. My body is very comfortable at this weight and no matter what I do, I just yo-yo back and forth between a couple of pounds. I know I should be proud of myself, but it's very hard for me to recognize & acknowledge my success because I still have low self esteem & still hate the way I look. And I still love food & love to eat. lol. It's a struggle I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. I just have to remind myself of that & it's ok to slip up... I just have to take things one day at a time and do the best I can do. I recently went to see a plastic surgeon and we began the (long) process by talking about skin removal surgery. I will need skin removed from my lower & upper belly, under my arms, my back/butt and my thighs as well as a boob lift. The excess skin makes me feel bad about myself, I still feel so ugly, and it continues to weigh me down and make my normal day to day activities difficult. My insurance company will pay for only 1 portion of the surgery - the lower belly as long as it fits their criteria to be considered medically necessary. Our initial claim to the insurance company was denied, but I decided to appeal by writing a long letter to the ins. company and they approved the payment for the procedure! My plastic surgeon & I then talked about the next step for surgery and I am getting 3 areas taken care of on the 1st surgery - my upper & lower bely along with my arms. Those are the areas on my body (especially my arms) that I feel the worst about. My surgery is set for Jan 22, 2013!! And then once that surgery is over & I'm fully recovered, we will talk about whether or not I want to have the skin removed on my back/butt & thighs. One step at a time! I'm hoping that this will help me feel better about myself.

Time to find it again

I've completely lost my will power & motivation to lose weight. I still have 3 pounds or so to go until my Disney goal weight & another 10 (13 total) until my ultimate goal. I have only lost about 10 pounds since last July. I keep going up & down & up & down. I suck so badly. I feel like I'm spiraling out of control lately, especially on the weekends. I binge bad & then spend all week trying to fix it. I don't want to go back to the way I used to be, but I feel myself slipping back into old habits. My life has been hectic lately - we bought a house!! I know I shouldn't be so hard on myself, but that is just the way I am!! For the last 2 weeks I've been saying "I'm going to get back on track this week." and then I never do. My goal this week was to start my new exercise routine. I pushed myself to exercise two times but then I ate like crap so it's like "why did I bother exercising?" So now I'm starting over.... AGAIN (*eyeroll*).... tomorrow for real! . I really need to refocus & find my motivation again. I have 5 months til Disney. I already bought about 5 shirts to wear while I'm there & I can't gain any weight or they won't fit. lol. So I guess I will use that as my motivation. The first week getting back on track is always rough - all those "bad" food cravings taunting me. But I can't give in, not this time. I need to be stronger then my cravings. I know by week 2 or 3 they will start to taper off, it's just getting to that point is tough sometimes. But if I don't do it now, I'm just going to be in this vicious cycle where I'm 'starting over again" every week. So, here I go (again). Let's do this!