South Beach Mondays: Week 1

Oh, how I wish I were talking about Miami. No, the South Beach diet. Here's the background: you all know John has been having health issues for a long time now. One of the side issues discovered in all the bijillion tests that he has endured is that he has a "fatty liver" which is a health risk for developing cirrhosis of the liver. It is partly a genetic thing, but can be mitigated by loosing body fat. So, his GI has recommended that he follow the South Beach diet to try to loose some weight. John wisely decided to wait till after the holidays to start, since SB involves cutting out most sugars/carbs/starches, at least for the first couple of weeks....an impossible feat during December. So, since he is starting in January, and I could stand to loose some weight myself, I decided to jump on board. We start today.

I have committed to update you all once a week as to how this process is going. Not that you all care about how much weight I may or may not loose, but it gives me some accountability to know that I am going to honestly post my weight and progress on the internet. I was raised protestant. We like to do things to cause ourselves a lot of guilt and angst.

Here's the deal: I have no "target weight" or really any expectations. I feel this is best for my psyche, see below for details on that. I just plan to do my best and stick with it as long as I feel comfortable and see what happens. My hope, I guess, is that as the weight starts to come off I will be motivated to continue.

Here's the problem: As some of you may know, I wrestled with an eating disorder for many years. It started when I was 15 and tormented me on and off for over a decade before I was able to get a good handle on it. There were periods in my life when I was totally out of control with it. I have not owned a scale for 7 years, and have been very apprehensive about bringing one into my home. I am worried that constantly monitoring my weight will do bad things to my brain. My saving grace is Giuliana. I made a commitment to her and to myself before she was born that I would not pass this thing onto her through subliminal (and not so subliminal) messages. I am firmly committed to never criticize my weight/looks in her presence. I have only slipped up once since she was born, when she was about 6 months old, and I immediately apologized to her and explained that weight is never a measure of the worth of a person. So, I hope that she will continue to inspire me to both value myself, value my thoughts and my words about my body, and value my actions that she might observe. And I hope that having a healthier Mommy and Daddy will be a good example for her as well.

Ok, here's the nitty gritty. I weighed 157lbs just before I got pregnant with G. That was my healthiest weight in years. I actually bought (and wore) 2 pair of size 8 pants at that weight. 157lbs isn't by any means a perfect weight, but I thought it was pretty good. See, I have this hormonal issue that, along with making it very difficult to get pregnant, also makes it easy to put on weight and hard to take it off. I was on a medication that helped even my hormones out and the weight just melted off. I really didn't do too much different. When I got pregnant, obviously, I gained weight. But I went overboard and gained more than I should have...I gave birth weighing 209lbs. YIKES! That's 52lbs in 9 months. Let me just tell you that G DID NOT weigh 52lbs. She weighed 7lbs, 5oz. That left me with 45lbs! Now, when you give birth you do loose a lot of water weight and some of the other weight does just sort of melt away over the first few weeks. So, I was down to 189lbs about one month after G was born. The last time I weighed myself was at one of John's doctor visits. There was a scale in the room and I hopped on. That was sometime over the summer...let's say August. I weighed 177lbs. 20lbs to go till pre-baby weight. Sigh...

Then we bought a scale yesterday. Here is my South Beach starting weight: (drum roll, please)

172.2lbs

Stay tuned. (God, did I really just post my weight on the INTERNET??)