Please read this!

Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers and well wishes. We appreciate it so much. Part of this last week has really brought a lot of us in the family to the realization that it is too often death which brings us together. There are some members of my family whom I only see once a year. If that. Literally. I would really like to do whatever I can to change that. We really don't live that far away from each other, and I suppose that means there are not many excuses for letting things go on the way that they have. I think that sometimes we get to caught up in the details of our own lives that sometimes extended family can become somewhat of an obligation. Letting this continue isn't a regret that I can bear to live with. (If your family isn't like this, then thank God. It's a treasure.) I hate that our distant relatives are so... distant. It's not something I can blame on anyone but myself either. I can't remember the last time I went out of my way to forge a closer relationship with any of them. But I'm going to now. It's not like we're going to live forever, and hopefully my life, our lives, the lives of our children, will only be richer from the effort.

Also, and this may be cheesy or cliche - but it is what it is, this week was a huge eye opener for me health-wise. I am obese. There is a serious amount of family history of not only obesity, but heart conditions and diabetes as well. I have got to make a change in my life, not only for me and what little bit of vanity I have left at this point, but for my children as well.

Let's look at it this way. Children who are raised by parents who have eating habits like my own (unhealthy emotional overeating, bad habits of binge eating with unhealthy foods, not enough balance of raw fruits and vegetables vs. junk food that makes me feel better, etc.) Children with one obese parent are 50% more likely to become obese by the age of 5 and stay that way. Children who remain obese up into the 10 - 13 age range have an 80% chance of being an obese adult. (All these statistics, and more, can be found at http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/obesity_in_children_and_teens) I know my children are only 2 and 4, but I am endangering their chances at being healthy for the rest of their lives with my behavior. That is completely unacceptable in my eyes, so I have been looking into tools to help me regain control over my eating habits, my emotional issues, and my life as a woman and as a parent.

I currently weigh in at 245lbs. and my BMI is currently a whopping 42. I am only 5'4". My goal weight is 146lbs. - 150lbs. with a BMI of 25. I can do this. It's almost 100lbs. Which is a huge goal for me, but I believe with a proper overhaul in my eating habits, a moderate amount of exercise, and a TON of support. I CAN DO THIS. I have to.

SO, I've tried "dieting" and it is not for me. I have had a gym membership, and it basically was a flop. Programs where I have to do this on my own do me no good. I started looking into the Thrive!Weightloss Program, and while it seems like exactly what I'm looking for, I just don't have the funds to sign up for it right now. Fortunately, a friend of mine from high school posted a link on facebook yesterday for http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ which is basically everything that Thrive! offers on it's online version from what I can tell. It has a lot of helpful tools for helping you track what goes into your body as far as food and exercise, helps track your goals for both, and respective progress of course, and I already made an account. Best of all, it's free. And there's an app for my phone which makes it even easier to keep track of my day, and keep myself accountable. This entire plan, by the way, starts yesterday.

Yesterday I wrote everything I put into my mouth into the food diary without making any changes to my normally terrible eating habits. I consume twice the amount of calories that I should on any given day. Which is scary, because I really don't eat that much. It's the quality of food that I'm eating. The food I registered in my nutritional counter yesterday was all fat, carbs, and cholesterol and almost no nutrients. The coffee I get at Starbucks almost every day has 815 calories in it, not to mention almost all of the sugar I should consume in a day. It was definitely an eye opener. If I continue to eat and live the way that I do right now, I will never be able to be the person that I should, that I deserve to be, the parent that my kids deserve, and I will always be miserable.

CONFESSION: The worst part of being an emotional over-eater is that eating calms me down, makes me feel better, so much so that sometimes it's a reflex now rather than an outright decision. BUT a large portion of my stress and self-disgust comes from my weight. They way that I look. The way that I feel. It effects every aspect of my life in a detrimental way, but I still do it because it makes me feel better even if it's just for a minute. A lot of people in my life have no clue that this is the kind of person that I am. I portray to the world, that I am confident, beautiful, and that I love the way I look. That's part of the reason why I'm putting it all out there. No more pretending. No more pretenses. Most days I really hate myself. I eat normally and healthy when I'm around friends and family, and then when my kids lay down for a nap I add butter and cheese to a can of ravioli, mix it up and eat it like soup. I feel guilty, but it doesn't stop me. Whenever I've asked people before to keep me accountable, I've stuck with it for a few weeks, and then started lying to them about what I ate because I was ashamed. I can't do it anymore. If I keep it up it will kill me and harm my children.

I am officially ready to make a change, be honest about it, and be the person that I know I am rather than the one I have been. Who's with me?

P.S. I was going to post a "before" photo but I don't even have a picture of myself that includes any amount of my body. Seriously. So, I'll take one this afternoon, and that can be tomorrow's post.