When I lived in Juneau AK, for the first nine months I was on my own in the sense that my family was still living back in Southeast Virginia. It was a hardship for all of us to be apart. One of the results for me was that I lost interest in eating, which ended up having a good effect: I lost 50 pounds, which was about half of the weight that I needed to lose to be within the "ideal" weight for my height (5'2.5"). When I realized that I was losing weight, I joined Weight Watchers for community, accountability, and a way to check my weight without obsessing about it (which is a problem I tend to have).
I was overjoyed when my family joined me in Alaska, but I did start gaining weight again. After moving back to DC, I regained about 30 of the pounds I'd lost, mostly due to stress and depression. I've dropped ten of those pounds, but I'm having trouble losing any more, probably because I continue to be pretty stressed out (which makes me a) feel ill and b) want to eat comfort food).
In the past, I've done well on a lower carb, low sugar, no HFC type of eating plan, and since I am pre-diabetic, I should probably go in that direction anyway. (There is also some indication that a lower carb diet may mitigate the chronic pain of fibromyalgia.) Unfortunately, I really enjoy making (and eating) desserts and breads. In addition to that, my husband does most of the cooking (since I work full time and am ill), and I don't feel that I can make him work harder or deal with a list of ingredient restrictions.
That said, if I were to stop eating some of the convenience food that we use - commercial bread, frozen pizza (my homemade pizza dough is much better anyway), ice cream, and so on - I would probably feel better and find it easier to lose weight, plus I'd be cutting out most of the HFC I'm ingesting. I will probably never go truly "low carb" (as in almost no carbs) again, but I could go back to using Splenda instead of sugar in a lot of my baking. (And it's not as if I bake constantly, anyway.) My husband does enjoy making and eating salads and meals that contain vegetables and healthy items, and even when our eating is less healthy, it's rarely "junk" and we don't eat out very often. It's just the convenience stuff that's an issue.
One thing that I have been doing more of is walking. I almost never actually hit 10,000 steps (in fact, I've done it exactly once when I was tracking), but my current goal is 5500 on days when I'm in the office, and I usually make that. What I'd like to do is get to the point where I'm doing 7000 steps or more without really thinking too much about it, i.e. building walking into my daily activities to a much greater degree than I already do. Walking has always been a favorite activity of mine. I'm not into working out and I'm done with joining gyms and then never using the membership, but I love to walk and I used to walk all over DC when I was younger. Even as recently as ten years ago I was able to do quite a bit of walking, but since moving back here, the pain has been too much. So that's something I'd like to get back to. When Chris and I went to Brookside Gardens recently, we walked from the Glenmont Metro to the park, all the way through it end to end, and back. I made it almost the whole way back to the Metro before giving out, and all in all it was over 11,000 steps. I doubt I could do that every day or even every weekend, but the more the better.
So I have some thoughts on the issue, and those thoughts are turning into plans and goals. I'm very happy to already be in what people think of as "normal" sizes (i.e., non plus sizes), but I'm right at the top of that scale and I'd be more comfortable if I weighed less (I have a very small frame). So this is something that I'll be working on in the next few months, and I hope I have some good results. I'll keep you posted!
