Happy New Year - New Commitment to Lose Weight Starts

Well, it has been 2 years since I lost 40 pounds with Medi Weight Loss.  I loved the program and it worked but unfortunately, I managed to regain 15 pounds so I am again on a quest to lose the 15 I gained plus a little extra for a total of 20 pounds.  I am not the type to make new year resolutions so I don't consider this a resolution but it is the day I am starting.  Blogging about my weight loss experience helped before so I'm turning to my blog again for accountability and support.  The big question now becomes whether I go back to Medi or not.  I know what to do as far as eating and exercise go and I wonder if now I need the expense of Medi.  I tried going back before the holidays and was not able to stick to the plan then and I wonder if it would be of any benefit at this time and whether being on the medication is a wise thing to do.  Now I'm thinking I will just follow the eating plan without the severe reduction in calories and without the medication and just follow a low-carb eating plan that I can stick to once I reached my goal.  My goal is to lose 20 pounds by May 1.  My 50th birthday.  Before and after pictures to follow.  I wish everyone a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2012.

Thank You MEDI! YOU ARE the one that WORKS!

Well, it has been over a year since I joined Medi and I have lost the 40 pounds I set out to lose and maintained even over the holidays.  Amazing.  It was finally good to go through the holiday season without feeling like a schlub.  I enjoyed getting clothes this year and doing a little fashion show for my mother and sister-in-law to show them how what they bought me fit.  I owe it all to my Medi Weight Loss Clinic.  I am still going regularly and even trying to lose 10 more so I can make it my ultimate goal loss of 50 pounds.  So, I made these cute little bookmarks for the wonderful staff that helped me, motivated me and inspired me.  I am so lucky.
   This is the year I also was brave enough to do a family portrait.  Here are a couple of pics from the little photo shoot we did in our backyard.  The photographer was a friend of Stan's from the local camera club he belongs too.  He shot all the pictures and then gave us a CD with all the shots on it.  We made Christmas presents for my family with them.   I will post later about how I made it through the holidays and what I'm doing to maintain but I just wanted to share with you my gift for the Medi staff and my family pics. 

I wish you all a wonderful happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Wellness Phase...Slight Gain But Manageable.

Losing it was a piece of cake....but keeping it off is going to be my challenge I believe. I'm in the Wellness phase of the Medi program. I recently started feeling like my eating was getting a little unwieldy and my sweet tooth was acting up again so in addition to beginning the week making sure I stick to eating properly to get me back on the right track to losing the 3 pounds that I've gained in the last 49 days, I made an appointment at Medi. I enjoyed visiting with Darlene, my counselor today and discussing the good and bad things I have been doing. The one good thing is that I am walking for 30 minute 3-4 days a week and she just wants me to step that up to 5 days a week and even up to 60 minutes a day if I can. She said that will help on the days that I do tend to eat a piece of chocolate or something. While I have stayed on track with my regularly daily meals, I have been snacking and indulging little bit of candy here as well as drinking wine on weekends and eating a little more than usual when I go to a restaurant. The good thing is I can feel immediately when I'm overdoing it and I can tell my weight has been creeping up a little by the way my clothes have been fitting and by weighing myself every day. So my goal is to get off the 3 pounds within the next 2 weeks before my next followup visit with Medi. Darlene advised to eat protein only for a few days and then add in vegetables for the rest of the week and next week I can add back some fruit. The holidays are coming and this will be the first year in a long time where I won't be hiding form the camera and I can look forward to being in pictures with my family. We all know it is more important to look good than to feel good. hee hee

Losing Weight Prolongs your Life

I was inspired to write this blog entry after a couple of things that happened yesterday. I had a “physical” in order to get life insurance. The insurance company sent a nurse to our house to conduct a physical. She took our medical histories, blood, urine, weighed and measured us. In talking with the nurse I was reminded me of how much weight plays a role in our overall health. Later that day, I saw the Dr Oz show. His show not only focused on his personal journey with a colonoscopy but at the end of the show he talked about our increasing the years of our lives and 5 key life-saving numbers we need to know for our overall health. Those were blood pressure, weight, waist measurement, cholesterol, and fasting blood glucose. For women, weight under 175 is considered good and a waist under 35 inches is good. Blood pressure number to watch out for is the top number or systolic number being 140 or below. I was thinking to myself, well thank goodness I lost the weight. I am now below 175 pounds and my waist size has shrunk to 31 inches. A third thing that makes me aware that losing weight is good for your health is my work. I have been a medical transcriptionist for 11-1/2 years and over that time, I have noticed the trend in the role weight plays on someone’s health. When I start typing on someone who has diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, depression, etc, invariably that person is overweight or obese. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that being overweight contributes greatly to these conditions. In speaking with the visiting nurse during my physical yesterday and mentioning about my gestational diabetes when I was pregnant with Steven 12 years ago, I was reminded at the huge step I took to maintaining my health by losing the weight. I remember reading years ago that women with gestational diabetes stand a higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes within 10 years. Had I not lost the weight, I feel I would have developed diabetes. My blood pressure has never been an issue for me thank goodness. It has always run low even at my highest weight. A nurse once told me it was the blood pressure of a teenager. I have been lucky in that regard. Losing the weight will help me continue to have good blood pressure readings. Now we await the blood work to return. I had the blood work drawn last December when I started the Medi Weight-Loss Program and my numbers were all within the normal range then so I look forward to seeing if they have even improved somewhat to the lower end of the normal range. So if you have issues with your weight and are fighting with yourself to get motivated to get it off, I encourage you to do so for your health. If you have any issues now with elevated blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc, it can be reversible with diet and exercise. I am not a doctor or a nurse but my experience with transcribing medical reports over the years shows me that with a reduction in your weight, you can be healthier.

Also, get a colonoscopy when you reach 50 – Here is a link to Dr. Oz's web page about his colonoscopy: http://www.doctoroz.com/colonoscopy-videos/screening-colonoscopy It changed my mind about the procedure. If you catch a precancerous polyp early, it will avoid you having real issues in the future.

Maintaining and Loving Summer

Key Largo, FL
August 2010
Outside on the deck at Snapper's Tiki Bar before dinner.

I don't know if anyone is following this blog any more. I haven't posted in so long. I have been maintaining and even survived vacation. It was finally nice to be on vacation and not feel like a blimp. I had so many new cute clothes to pack and wear on the trip. I felt so good despite the wickedly hot weather. I ate a lot of broiled fish, peel n' eat shrimp, fruit, and veggies. I tried hogfish and yellow tail snapper (both wonderfully mild white fish) and one night had 1/2 pound broiled lobster. I also ate a Medi Weight-Loss bar every morning for breakfast with coffee as the lodge we stayed at had a continental breakfast and since I am staying away from wheat products, I could not partake in the danish, cakes, and bagels and I'm also keeping things low carb so I did not eat the yogurt and a lot of fruit either so bringing my bars was a very good thing for me to do and I always started out my day right. I did save my carbs for the wine and I did partake in some Key Lime pie (no crust) that Stan and I shared a couple of nights for desert (we were in the "Keys". How could I not). French fries snuck in there to up the carb count one day (hey it was hot and I sweated a lot, I must have needed the salt). Being able to pick and choose what carbs I have is so nice and helping me maintain when I feel I want to splurge. I try not to do everything at once and if I am bad one meal, I watch the next 2 meals and if I have a bad day, I watch it the next 2 days. So that is what I did and when we got back, I immediately went back to my "new" way of eating. I weigh in again next Wednesday and I definitely to not want to show a gain. So I will be behaving myself from now until then.

Key Largo, FL
August 2010
Outside Jimmy Johnson's Big Chill where we had dinner inside and
watched a beautiful sunset. 

Wellness Phase

I am in the Wellness phase of the Medi Weight Loss Program...So I have held my weight loss for a month and now I am on wellness. What does that mean? That means I'm on my own with my eating and they are going to monitor me monthly and I go from paying $80/week to $35/month. More disposable income to spend on clothes now. I am to still watch my calories, fat and carb intake and they will keep tabs on my weight to make sure I am not gaining. I don't intend on gaining because I do not intend on going back to my old eating habits. I am a changed eater. I have changed my thinking about food and I am very happy about that. Anybody going on a diet needs to know that to lose weight you cannot eat the way you did that got you fat to begin with and you should not expect to go back to eating that way after you take the weight off. I do not look at the wellness phase of the program as my license to go back to old eating habits. There isn't anything that I am thinking about ... oh hey I'm on wellness I can eat such and such. I'm not thinking that way. My plan is to continue to eat the things that I have been eating to lose weight and maybe add things like a few grains and a little more fruit in the mix. Although because of an issue with gluten intolerance, I am not planning on going back to eating wheat-based products so no pasta, breads, cookies, cakes, crackers, etc. I will occasionally have some nonwheat-based breads and crackers but those will be limited. I do not intend on eating rice, white potatoes, or nonwheat-based pastas either. Those have entirely too many carbs for me. I need to keep my daily carb allowance around 50 per day to keep the weight off and 40 carbs for a serving of quinoa pasta is not going to help me do that. Meat, vegetables, and fruit will continue to be the mainstay of my diet. I am feeling so good and love being a smaller size. I also plan on exercising more and hope to start tennis soon. I am enjoying exercising in the pool with swimming laps and other water exercises. I feel I'm toning up slightly and will start incorporating other methods of exercise as the summer goes along.

Two Weeks and Maintaining

Two weeks on short-term maintenance and I've been doing okay. I did gain 2 pounds the first week for some reason but this week lost one that I gained. According to the plan, I can go up to 1000 calories a day. I add another 100 calories of protein and add a second serving of starch. I am not doing wheat because I am suspicious I have a gluten intolerance so I got some rice bread and I am also trying some tapioca bread. I didn't intend on going on processed foods but it is nice to have something else to eat besides meat and vegetables. About every other day for breakfast I have been having a slice of the bread toasted with a little smear of peanut butter. I did meet some friends out for dinner the other night and ordered steak with shrimp. I had a side salad for my vegetable and baked potato for my starch. I only ate maybe 1/4 of the potato (no butter or sour cream) and took such small nibbles out of the potato because it was hard to get used to eating it. I felt like I was cheating. I think the hardest thing about adding foods back in is getting used to not feeling like you are cheating. I am trying to keep a good food diary this week because I have gotten away from it the last couple of weeks this way if my weight is up for any reason, the counselor can see what I have been eating. I don't think I'm going to gain though unless I totally blow it. I have been swimming about 3 days a week for exercise and it has been a fun way to do something with Steven. He gets me moving when we are in the pool because he wants to race and I pull him around while he holds on to the noodle. The water provides good resistance and I definitely feel it in my muscles.