204.6

Most of you that have know me for more than 5 years might know that I am a weight fluctuator.  Even from an early age I would go up and down with my weight.  As a child, when ever I would go and visit my dad for a few weeks I would always come home 10 pounds heavier.  The difference between my moms house and dads?   At my dads house there was unlimited access to nutty bars, oatmeal cream pies, and cable.  My dad, being a man, and probably having some guilt that he only saw me once or twice a year, almost never said 'no'.

My first diet was when I was 11.  My sister, her husband, and I all went on the T-Factor diet when I was 11-the summer before I went into 6th grade.  I look back on that with love for my sister, because she was able to stand back and objectively say that her chunky little sister should not be so chunky-but also with a little bit of horror.  The T-Factor diet, for those that may not know, was a diet based on drastically reducing your fat grams.  Yikes!  As an adult, I have studied all sorts of diets, and would never put a child with a developing brain on a low fat diet-I believe in fat!  Our bodies need fat.  This is probably why we no longer hear of the T-Factor Diet-reducing fat to those levels can make you crazy!  I lost probably 15-20 pounds on that diet-I really don't recall anymore exactly how much-this was 20+ years ago.  I do remember stepping off of the Greyhound bus and my mom telling me how good I looked.

My weight slowly crept up over the next 4 years until I was in 9th grade.  That was the year that I went on Jenny Craig with my mom- I was successful on that as well.  Then my weight slowly crept up and in 11th and 12th grades I experimented with bulimia and anorexia.  There were days that I would have almost nothing for breakfast, a Mountain Dew for lunch, and almost nothing for dinner.  When we would go to our favorite mexican restaurant, I would come home and vomit.  Yuck!  Looking back on that, I am glad that this phase didn't last too long at a time.

Towards the end of my freshman year in college, I ended up pregnant and placed the baby for adoption. Over the year after I had her, My weight went slowly down, and then stalled at about 180.  I was 209 when she was born.  That summer, I limited myself to 800 calories a day, walked at the park every chance I got, and was able to drop about 30 pounds between my sophmore and junior year in college.  The cute theatre boys I went to school with told me I looked good!  Success!  And then-do you see where this is going?  I kept it off, even lost a little more in a healthy way, and then my weight crept back up.  I met my husband, got married, and got pregnant hovering around 200 pounds.

Between L and O, I lost 50+ pounds on Weight Watchers.  I weighed 147 and was in the best shape of my life when I got pregnant with O.   I felt pretty gross most of the beginning of this pregnancy, and also used it as an excuse to eat eat eat all the cake I could.  I gained 70 pounds with that pregnancy!  Before he was a year old, I went on WW again and lost about 40 pounds.  Then, I hit a rough patch and over the course of the next year and a half, gained 50.  Then, I would gain and lose the same 15 pounds for the next couple of years.  In January of 2010, I made some changes to my lifestyle, and have managed to lose and keep off 20 pounds.  But then.  I got stuck.  I have lost and gained the same 5 pounds over the last year.  Sooo.  Here I am.  Back on Weight Watchers.  I am feeling rather optimistic that this time it'll stick.

Why?

Because, they have tweaked the WW plan in such a way that it doesn't seem as strict anymore.  On the old system, you would get as low as 18 points a day and then an extra 35 a week to spread out however you wanted.  Now-the lowest points anyone is on is 29-and you get an extra 49 points to spread out however you like.  I am also treating this round of WW as more of a lifestyle remodel than a 'DIET'.

I started at 208.2.  I am now 204.6.