Hi everyone, newbie here

Hello, I thought I would introduce myself. I am Jan, I am a 42 year old mother of six. Three in the nest, three out. My kids are ages 25, 22, 21, 8, 7 and 3. I call them my two litters. I am a dog person, so that fits.

My high weight was 272 this past winter. I have been trying to lose weight since I was a kid. It wasn't as bad until I started getting pregnant. Then it really started packing on. I have always been sort of a binge eater. If something was good I wanted a lot of it. I am a very good cook, I could always cook something great and eat seconds, thirds and then take a plate of it to bed with me. A typical bedtime snack also included a can or two of pop and a handful of Heath Bars.

With kids 5 and 6, I developed a weakness in my abdominal wall that caused all the fat to slump down into a large pannus. This started really inhibiting my motion and caused an old bum lumbar disk to herniate last July. It was in July, while I was stuck on the couch for weeks and watching my marriage begin to disintegrate that I really began contemplating life as a disabled person. Disabled by food. I didn't want to be that person. It is a scary spiral: Gain weight, get hurt, lose mobility, gain more weight, move even less, gain more weight...

I went to my doctor and they gave me a prescription for Xenical. This is the drug that is supposed to inhibit fat absorption. Nasty medicine. You know, you can only go potty so many times in one day before you start seeing blood on the tissue. I guess I lost about 20 lbs, but had to stop taking the medicine. I wasn't exercising at all. By April I had gained back about seven lbs and then had a life altering event occured.

It was my son's seventh birthday and my husband took a video of me:



I hated seeing myself as I really was, I was round like a barrel. My typical view of myself was way different than real life showed me. I really felt like I was not as fat as I was. I avoided mirrors and photographs, but for some reason this video really hit me hard.

I started exercising right away and went back to the doctor. I had a full checkup. Everything other than the weight was ok. He asked me if I would consider weight loss surgery. I am the ultimate wimp. I hate needles, let alone knives! I decided to try Meridia, a weight loss medicine which works on the satisfaction centers in the brain. It has the same kinds of ingredients as an anti-depressant, and since I was depressed all the time anyway, I decided to try a low dose, 10 mg. a day

After a couple of weeks my blood pressure went way up. They had me start taking it only once every other day. By this time I was eating much better and walking on my treadmill for a half hour a day first thing in the morning. My blood pressure went back down and then something happened that changed my life.

One of the readers on my blog suggested that I try fitday.com to start journaling my food and exercise. I started immediately and have been doing so every day since. I am now able to keep my food intake to about 1500 calories or lower and about 15 or less grams of fat per day. I drink a lot of water, no other drinks at all and have pretty much gone to a vegetarian diet, with the exception of seafood. My journal is public if you would like to see it. I have good days and bad days, but I try not to go nuts by eating too little or binging. I try to keep it straight down the middle of the road. One day I journaled the foods that I used to eat. It came to over 6500 calories and 370 grams of fat per day. That was an average day. Surprisingly, that is not too much over what average Americans are eating if they are eating out frequently. The supersized fast food meals, with soda and fries are around 2000 calories and a hundred grams of fat.

I now walk an hour a day. I make the best of that hour and really work it hard. I also lift weights and do crunches and push-ups, although I am just starting out with those and am not doing too very many yet. I try to take it easy because I am still fighting with a lot of injuries. I have that bad disk, I have a wicked case of hip bursitis from a fall seven years ago, I have knees that tend to get fluid buildup and I wear orthopedic inserts in my shoes because of plantar fascitis. All of those things are made worse by weight gain. I don't want to re-injure anything and end up back on the couch.

When I first started this in April I was taking a lot of medicines. Xanax for stress, Soma for muscle pain, Nexium for heartburn, Allegra for allergies, and Ibuprofen by the handful. I have stopped taking all of those medicines. I am thinking that my allergies must have been made worse by something that I have cut out of my diet. Losing my allergies really surprised me the most. I am saving $60.00 a month in copays by not buying so many medicines. I used to have to take a soma, a xanax and two Tylenol PM to sleep. Now I am to bed at ten and up at five or six. I hardly ever nap anymore. No sleep medicines anymore.

All in all I feel great. There are many days when I don't feel like getting on the treadmill, but I make myself take that first step. Pretty soon the hour is over and I am feeling so energized.

Here is a photo that shows where I was 87 days ago, and then a shot of me that my husband took yesterday. He used the "s" word yesterday, saying that I looked sexy. I nearly fell over.


It's all onward and downward from here on in as far as my scale is concerned. I have 60 more lbs to lose and I can't wait to see what my body is going to look like when I reach 199, let alone 150!