Diet Week 4 Results: Whoo Hoo!

  Well, here it is, the beginning of week 5 of my diet. With all the up and down I've been having, I was pleasantly surprised, (Ok, THRILLED.), to see today that I have actually met my 4 week goal of 10 pounds! I lose about 2 and a half pounds a week normally when I'm on my diet,but this time I haven't been as strict with myself, so it took off slowly. Now I have caught up and I'm on schedule: 4 weeks = 10 pounds. Of course, 10 pounds is only, to paraphrase Jacob Marley in "A Christmas Carol", "a drop in the comprehensive ocean of my weight." It's a start though. It also means I am now officially only 20 pounds heavier than I was when I lost the last bunch of weight a few years ago. 20 more pounds and I'll at least be back where I should have started this time.
  It's funny, but, considering how long I have been a fat lady, I still have trouble thinking of myself that way. I still tend to think of myself the way I used to be, or at least, as not as big as I am. (You know you are fatter than you think when you accidentally knock things over with your butt when you didn't think you were anywhere near them...) At this point in my life I have been fat almost as long as I wasn't fat. I was a small person until a 'progesterone imbalance' at the age of 26 made the doctor prescribe pills full of progesterone for me that instantly sapped my strength and made me start putting weight on. I became so sluggish I could hardly move sometimes, (And this was when I was still thin.), and spent a lot of the time just wanting to sleep. I complained to my doctor that I thought the pills were making me gain weight. "Oh no." he said, "They won't do that." (I read years later that vegetarians shouldn't take certain kinds of birth control pills because they block the absorption of something and it messes with your metabolism. Great. I was right Doc!) I weighed 105 when I started on the pills in October of 1988. By the next fall I weighed 125 pounds. that was the fall I got married. I had gained weight so quickly at that point that my wedding dress fit fine when I bought it, and only a few months later when I got married it was getting tight. By the next fall I weighed 143 pounds and stopped taking the pills. At that point Emma got started and I gained 40 pounds with her. I lost little of that when she was born, and only slightly more as time went on, in spite of nursing her. I had two more kids, and gained 40 pounds with each one, losing a bit in between them, and after Ivy.(So I never got to 143 plus 40 X 3, in case you're wondering.) I have lost about 40 pounds twice in the last 9 years, but the first time it all came back. The last time I actually got lower than I had the first time, and I got back on my diet in less time, so only half had come back. If I had managed to keep it off both times I wouldn't be too bad now. I was doing so well the first time, but then my Dad got sick and was diagnosed with dementia and then came to live with us. I spent a lot of time at the nursing home with him and my eating habits got all messed up. When he lived with us I was very stressed and forgot all about trying. It took me years to get back to the diet.Hopefully this time I can be better behaved and keep more of an eye on it. I don't want to have to keep dieting.