The Chunkersons!

Hi!  I wrote a post about my new year's resolutions on my personal blog (So...what else?) and one of my resolutions was to lose 26 pounds.  Another one was to exercise 350 times this year.  What was I thinking?  That only leaves me 14 days of not exercising!  So I need some support, and I asked if anyone wanted to be my diet partner.  My friend Anne told me she would, and my friend Kristin said she is getting back on the diet wagon herself (She has a great personal diet blog HERE), so I had the great idea to make a community blog where we and ANYONE ELSE can contribute!  It's a public blog!  To post something, (hopefully diet or exercise related) follow the directions at the top of the righthand column.  The idea of this is to make me accountable to the other authors and readers on this blog to hold up my end of the dieting/blogging bargain.  If there are no other authors/readers, I'm going to eat an entire chocolate cherry cheesecake out of depression, so if you are reading this and you care at all about my arteries, you'll contribute your dieting success, failure, tip, trick, anecdote to this, OUR blog.

Here's my story:  I have gained and lost the same 26 pounds about 5 times since college.  It's always the same.  I want to get down to 140 (or even, dare I wish it; 135) and I do well and get down to 150 and then I feel so good, and look so much better that I give up on the vigilance of dieting and vow to just "eat healthy" and I keep up with the exercise until I get a bad cold and then I tell myself I will take a few days off until I get better.  About two weeks after the cold I tell myself I better start exercising again, but then I don't because if I jump back into it, I'll get sore muscles and I hate sore muscles SO MUCH.  So I put it off and don't really think about dieting and exercising until a few years later, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I notice that my chin has disappeared into my fat neck. I generally gain weight in my upper back, neck, and stomach.  It doesn't look nice.  If I didn't gain weight in my face I'd probably never diet again.  A fat neck is unacceptable to my vanity.

It is strange that once I get to 176 I feel like I've hit the wall.  It's not like I'm weighing myself all the time and know that I'm getting close; I notice the neck fat, feel the tight pants, and think, "heeeeeyyyyyyy...... I'm FAT!"  and I weigh myself and it's always 176.  Weird huh?  So I'm at 176 right now and I want to get down to 150 and stay there!  It's the staying there that will be hard.  I can't seem to keep these 26 pounds off.

About half way through losing the 26 pounds, I will get frustrated because I will plateau on the weight loss, and my thighs will be all bumpy because (and I'm guessing here) the cellulite density is reduced so they aren't the solid fat they are now, but bumpy, giggly, ugly fat, but I will have invested about 2 months in exercise and diet and will think they should be WAY better looking.  Also my bras will be puckery because the very first place I lose weight is my boobs.  But I will eventually lose the 26 pounds.  I hope.  It might now be as easy now that I'm over 40.

I joined Weight Watchers online which kind of chaps my hide because I'm paying someone so I can work to reduce my own fat!  I feel like such a sucker!  But I was on WW once before and it worked for me, so I figure, anything that might help will be worth the money.  And I'm cheap so for the next three months I will feel obligated to take full advantage of the WW website or else it will be like flushing money down the toilet.  That should get me off to a good start.  I find the WW points system to be easier to follow than keeping track of calories.

For exercise my goal is to do at least a half hour of some kind of workout every day (350 days in 2011, anyway)  If I do more than 75 minutes of something kind of hard, I'll count it as two workouts.  I have the Slim in Six series of workouts which I really like and they are great for toning muscle, and endurance.

I'm starting the diet tomorrow, and I started the workouts yesterday, and yes, I'm sore and hating it.

That's my story! What's yours?

Sarah "Chunky" Chunkerson