It has been four years since I started gaining weight. It has been over two years since I’ve tried to lose weight. This year, I had the most success, logging in 15 pounds of weight loss since the first of the year. This is great! But most of that loss took place within the first three months of the year. Since that time, I have been fluctuating back and forth among the same ten pounds.

When I began in January in earnest, I did the math. I imagined myself losing at least two pounds a week in 2007. I asked a friend who had lost weight if this was reasonable. She told me to shoot for one pound a week. I readjusted my goal, and it seemed reasonable.

After the first 15, I lost 7 more and then I gained 8 lost 6 gained 4 lost 8 gained 6 lost 2 gained 9 lost 4…

You get the idea.

I began 2007 at an all time high (not counting pregnancy) of 250 pounds. I would estimate that I gained 40 to 60 of those pounds in 2006. In fact, I know for a fact that I weighed 219 in March 2006, which at the time I thought was horrible. Now I wish I weighed that.

I have not been able to get under 230 no matter what I’ve done. I have cut out pop and fast food. I have tried to eat sensibly. I am eating breakfast.

My downfalls that I was aware of but not willing to change (yet): flavored creamer in my coffee (fat free) and alcohol in social situations. (Last weekend I had three seven and sevens. Normally, I may have a few bud lights or Mike’s hard lemonade during a weekend.)

I have become frustrated and annoyed with myself. I don’t tend to snack, and I don’t normally eat after dinner.

Finally, I figured out that I had done all of the research I could online, and I needed active help from a medical professional. I made an appointment, and I went Wednesday.

I saw a nurse practitioner. I loved her. She probably spent 40 minutes or more talking to me about my habits and giving me great tips to help me continue to lose.

She ordered blood work, so she can rule out physical problems like thyroids. And she gave me some great tips.

I realized that I eat at the wrong time of the day. Typically, I don’t eat lunch until 2 or 3 p.m. I have dinner around 7 or 8 p.m. She suggested eating all of my food by the day no later than a 6 p.m. dinner. She said it will better match my metabolism, and it could result in additional weight loss. I’m trying it, along with some other things, and I hope it will result in some success.

Wednesday, at the doctor’s office I weighed in at 235. At home on my scale this morning, it showed 232. I’m not suggesting I’ve had a 3 pound weight loss. I’m just trying to record both, since they are different scales, and I will take both as a starting off point to see how I do with this new eating schedule.

One of the biggest problems I have in losing weight is figuring out my calorie intake for things I eat at home.

A month or so ago, I looked into more serious medical intervention like weight-loss surgery. I even considered signing up for an informational session. It was alarming to realize that my BMI is VERY close to the range where I would be considered a viable candidate for weight loss surgery. To qualify, you need a BMI over 40, and mine was 38 at the time I checked it. At a 38 bmi, you could qualify if you had other health problems, which I don’t. And I don’t want them either.

My ideal weight (high end) for my height (5′7″) is 160 pounds. In high school, I tended to weigh 150. As an adult, I was normally 170 or 180. It is only in the last four years (since my dad’s death) that I have really put on the weight.

One reason I gained so much in 2006: I was working two jobs AND going to grad school, which meant I tended to grab at least two fast food meals a day (lunch and dinner) as I drove to my various responsibilities.  I also think my weight gain tends to be related to stress.

On the news the other day, I saw a pretty cool idea. It’s the walkstation, which is a desk affixed to your treadmill.  I’d use it.

I start teaching again next Monday, and while there will be back to school shopping in my household, it will not be for me. I will not be wearing a new outfit when I arrive to class Monday.

And this made me think about my clothing options. I have a wide range of sizes in my closet, although some are stored for when I get back to that size. I don’t know why I do this. The last time I wanted to lose weight, I kept my size 12 pants. When I finally fit in them again, the pants didn’t last very long. They ripped easily like the threads had dried up or something.  I think that was after my last pregnancy.

I try to avoid putting off buying new clothes because I think they won’t fit when I actually lose the weight that I plan to lose. And then I end up being fat and frumpy.

I’ve learned that there are some places I just can’t shop. Have you ever actually looked at the selections at places like Walmart or Kmart? Do they think that every overweight woman is over 65 years old? In all fairness, I just logged onto walmart.com to find proof of what I’m trying to say, and the selections there don’t look that bad. However, those are not the shirts my local Walmart stocks. Locally the shirts have lots of things on them — beads, ribbons and ugly stuff that will fall off after a couple of washes anyway. Nothing I actually want to wear.

I do like places like Target and Fashion Bug, especially when they have sales. Some of my favorite shirts are the Medona brand from Target.

I admit, there aren’t a lot of places to shop near my home, and being plus-size makes it even more challenging. For instance, I have to drive an hour to shop at a Target and about 45 minutes to reach a Meijers. Walmart and Kmart are even about 15 to 20 minutes away.

So, being overweight, I find I have a tendency to not shop for new clothes. And I find the selections tend to be frumpy, which means that I become a horrid fashion statement. It is no wonder that I rely primarily on jeans and t-shirts.

The hardest thing to stay current on in my wardrobe is my shirts. I try to have a wide range of shirts, most that would pass as dressy/business type shirts. And it seems like they either shrink quickly or my chest grows quickly because they never seem to fit well across the chest. I hate gaping buttons.

So how do you keep a nice wardrobe while struggling with these issues?

Aug. 18, 2006, I went to an amusement park with my children. It was the first time I was confronted with the possibility of being too big to be the parent I want to be. I had already been writing about my weight since January 2006, so it was on my mind. The humiliating experience ended up being the first chapter of my memoir, Fat Man’s Daughter.

This past weekend, the date, Aug. 18, 2007 arrived, and I wasn’t at an amusement park, but as the day went by, I also realized I wasn’t where I wanted to be either. I have talked and talked about losing weight, and I’ve tried to do something about it, but I haven’t had a lot of success in actually losing weight. I have a lot of up and down the scale within about a 10 pound range.

So I am recommitting to my weight loss journey. I am not going to be discouraged by what I haven’t done. Instead, I am going to focus on what still needs to be done. I don’t need to do the math and think about how much weight I could have lost. I need to do the exercise and be better about keeping the calories done. I’m starting again and maybe by Aug. 18, 2008, I’ll have something more encouraging to report. But I’m not going to wait until then. I want to see some results — maybe not on the scale but at least in my behavior — by Sept. 18, 2007. I want to exercise regularly. Key word there — regularly. I can do this.

One of my major motivators for losing weight is helping my children develop an honest body perception. I want my children to be able to recognize things like a healthy portion, weight and lifestyle. I want my children to develop healthy habits now that will serve them when they are adults. Although I wasn’t overweight as a child, I had already learned bad habits.

There was that recent study that found the people in your social circle can impact your weight and body image. OK, so I haven’t actually read an article on the subject, so I don’t know anything about the actual study. I’m just thinking of my own experience. I know I never thought of my dad as fat, and he weighed in at over 400 pounds. I know that I often think of myself as skinny, and I am really 80 pounds overweight. In other words, I have a tendency to be delusional about weight.

And, I also know that I am more successful in my attempts to lose weight when I have someone to join me in losing weight and/or exercising. My husband and I have made pacts in the past to walk regularly, but when 6 a.m. rolls around, more often than not, he resets the alarm for 7 a.m. It seems so many times, we will tell each other, “we’ll walk tomorrow.” But lately I’ve been trying to change that. If we don’t walk in the morning, I have tried (a couple of times at most) to get him to walk at night. It’s hot though, and afternoon/evening walks aren’t very appealing.

But on Monday, I made a deal with another family member — my 13-year-old daughter. We have committed to walk at least 5 times a week, and to begin with, we are walking 2 miles. Teens can be persistent, and so far it has been pretty successful. We grab our iPods and off we go. Yesterday my two younger daughters joined us. The girls jogged part of the two miles, but I’m not up to that yet. I’m not sure if I ever will be. I’ve never particularly liked to run. We shall see.

The thing about the walk? We’ve been going in the evening, usually after dinner, when it is still hot out. Last night when we arrived back home, I immediately took a shower because I needed it.

I have also started exercising to my exercise DVD. Mind you, I haven’t managed to do the entire workout yet, and that is usually because I have to do other stuff, but it is a start. I am doing what I need to do to lose weight — exercising. Because I find I can only talk the talk so long before I expect results.

I stepped onto my bathroom scale Sunday. It is something I do every week, although I can usually tell just by the way my clothes fit whether I’ve lost weight. I knew before I stepped on that I hadn’t lost weight, and that I probably had gained weight. The scale confirmed my suspicions.

Since the new year, I had lost 16 pounds. I had actually lost 14 of those pounds pretty quickly, and then nothing for a long time. And now, since the new year, I’ve only lost 8 pounds. Which means, I’ve gained back 8 pounds.

I hate this weight thing. I hate weighing in, but I always hope that the numbers will shock me into something. I think the numbers did that this week. I haven’t been exercising, and I hadn’t made any progress on losing weight, so I think it confirmed that I need to renew my vow to exercise regularly.

It is also depressing, weighing in, because my weight can fluctuate so much in just the space of a day. And then I try to record my weight loss progress, and it is as if there is no progress, which, of course, lately there hasn’t been any progress.

When I went to stand on the scale Sunday, my husband was in the room. I tried blocking the results with my toes, but he was pretty determined to see my weight. And it sort of ticked me off. I was already upset with my weight, and then he made a comment that was supposed to be encouraging, but I did not need to hear it right then, and I responded in a very snotty manner.

I keep thinking the first step in weight loss is admitting I have a problem, but I have been admitting I have a problem for almost two years. I think it is time I take the second step, and I keep taking that second step. I can’t quit quitting. Or rather, I did quit, and now I need to restart again. Exercise. Right. I need to do that. Really. Because I am tired of not losing weight. And, yet, if there were a quick fix solution, I’d jump at it. Right not, I think I’m 80 pounds overweight, although I’d be happy to lose 60. Heck, at this point, I’d be happy to lose 10 or 20. I’d be happy to lose.

Today, I stepped on the scale again, thinking maybe yesterday (Sunday) was a fluke. I was up another pound. Gah.

I spent most of the last four weeks away from home, and I had high hopes that it would result in some weight loss.

Instead it resulted in a lot of picture taking, and in each picture, I was a little surprised by exactly how big I am.

And all of this picture taking ended with me burning all of my huge photo files onto CDs, and it had been a long time since I had done that, and my computer was nearly full. So I was looking at pictures of me from 2005, 2006 and 2007.

I realized that in 2005, I wasn’t that much overweight. Maybe within 20 to 30 pounds. Doable, right? But starting in late 2005 and all through 2006, I bloomed. This coincided with me starting grad school. I know that at one point I gained 20 pounds in less than 2 weeks time. Part of it was because my time was spent sitting and working or driving and eating.

And that’s how I ended up like this. Overweight and a bit depressed about it. And yet, not quite depressed enough to actually get off my butt and do something about it. I make lame attempts. For instance, I did get up at 6 a.m. and walk, but I only did it one day so far this week.

A new study came out this week that says the people you love influence your weight. So if you are trying to have good habits, you need to surround yourself with people who have good habits. I know this has worked with my husband and whether or not we actually get up at 6 a.m. to walk. When one of us isn’t motivated, the other one can talk us into it, but it works the other way too, and lately it is working the other way a lot.

I’ve been trying to get a better understanding of my body size compared to other body sizes I see. And I’m larger. And I don’t like it. Yesterday, I was at a restaurant and sitting at a bar behind me was about 7 tiny tiny girls wearing almost nonexistent skirts. Most had no curves. And rather than get depressed, I tried to think differently.

Throughout this incredibly unsuccessful attempt to lose weight, I have been trying to lose it all. I even figured out that if I lost X amount a week, I would have lost it all by X date. I did the math but not the loss. Now, I’m thinking I need smaller goals. Not as small as one pound a week because that doesn’t work for me. Weight fluctuates too much in a day that it just gets depressing.  My first goal? Twenty pound, preferably before the end of the year.

And exercising — walking three times a week and other exercising. No more working on my computer for hours without a break. I need to get up and get moving in between too. I need the break. So basically, I am recommitting to losing weight. Don’t quit quitting, right?

My goal — some day in the future, I will no longer be bigger than the average bear. My body in 2005 would be nice.

The first week of this writing workshop, I met Rachel. She’ll turn 50 in a short time, and she is on her way to losing the last 10 pounds of her 50 pound goal. Losing weight isn’t the only thing Rachel has changed about her life recently, but she has definitely committed to a more healthy life style.

We’re living in the dorms on the north end of campus, and Rachel is walking to the workshop every day (there and back) despite 90 degree heat. I walked with her one day. I didn’t really have the shoes to do more than that. As I drove by her in my car, I asked if I could transport her bag for her. She declined, saying she wanted to have the extra weight.

As we meet for meals, and even when we went to Applebees, Rachel didn’t waiver from her goal. She watched her calories, as well as something else — I don’t know what. Um, protein? I’ll have to ask her. She is an inspiration.

The first week, late at night, a group of us were chatting in our dorm room, and we were talking about weight loss. I mentioned I was almost 100 pounds overweight, and I wanted to lose about 75. Rachel was astounded. To her, she said, I didn’t look overweight. I asked her to guess how much I weighed. She said 180. That’s always a hard question — you tend to say less than you really think. But when I told her I weighed 237, she was shocked. Ah, the advantages of my five extra inches.

This week we’re here for five days, and I brought my tennis shoes. I need to walk. Maybe not to the workshop (my deodorant can’t take it), but walking every day. And maybe Rachel can lend me a little bit of will power. I need to be more diligent in saying no.

One night a group of us went to Applebees after 9 p.m. for half-price appetizers. Rachel went because she knew Applebees has a Weight Watchers appetizer. She saw something on the menu she’d like to try, but she couldn’t find the points value. She asked the waitress, who tried to find out and finally came back with a phone number to get the information. Instead of eating the item anyways and vowing to do better another time (like I would do), Rachel declined the unknown points and went with what she knew was OK.  Later, Rachel learned what she wanted was actually less points than the other, so on our next trip to Applebees, she ordered the item.

The first trip to Applebees? I ordered the spinach dip and chips which are probably enough calories to keep me in good stead for a day. I don’t know for sure. The next time I ordered nachos and ended up taking most of those home, so I did better (if you don’t count the two bahamamamas). Ah. Will power. I can’t stop trying though. If I think about it enough eventually I’ll start doing it too, right?

My favorite find — I found Hormel makes these fabulous meals that store in a cupboard and heat up in a microwave in about 60 seconds. They taste great too. Rachel noted some of them are just as good or better than the Weight Watchers as far as whatever it is she watches. I asked Rachel, she looks at fat and fiber content too. Her WW meals have to be frozen. This is great considering I’m living in a dorm four to five days a week right now.

And instead of eating one of my good meals today, I am going to go eat somewhere. Today I gave my teaching demonstration, and I grew more nervous as the time passed, and then I had to sit there for a half hour without me making any comments and listen as others commented about my demo, and I grew really nervous. I actually kept my hand in front of my mouth to keep me quiet. And I just need to leave this room for a bit. And I need some will power. Maybe Rachel has some to spare.

I so want to lose weight without the work. I wonder if Staples makes an Easy button for that.

On Monday, I leave for a four-week writing workshop. I’ll be home on the weekends, but I’ll still be gone four to five days a week, and I will live in a dorm.

Today I have to pack, and I am worried about what I will wear. I want to be comfortable, and I’m not sure what the temperatures will be, but I suspect it will be hot. And possibly rainy.

And it’s not like I have a lot of options to select from. I would say that I no longer fit into a majority of the clothing in my closet. And yet I don’t want to buy more clothing because I want to lose this weight.

But I did go shopping the other day, and it just made me feel bigger and fatter. I left the store feeling very down and depressed about my size.

It has been months since I lost any additional weight. I tend to fluctuate between the same five pounds. The thing is I can tell when I am at the highest rather than the lowest. With just those five pounds, my body feels differently. Yet why haven’t I lost any more weight?

I’ve done some exercising but not as much as I should be doing.

It’s always been so easy to hide my excess weight before. People would be surprised to hear how much I really weigh. But now they aren’t surprised. I look fat too.

I know what it takes to lose weight — exercise more and eat less, but I have a hard time doing that. My biggest problem is that I don’t know how to figure out calories and portions for food I make at home.  I wonder how much I really am consuming, and I have no way to figure it out. How many calories is there in two pieces of toast with butter and peanut butter spread thinly across the toast’s surface? Why peanut butter and butter?

This week I have been thinking more about exercise short cuts than real loss. I investigated the new diet pill — Alli. It sells for $44 for 60 capsules at my local store. The bottle contains 60 tablets, and the instructions say take one pill with every meal. It warns against taking more than 3 a day. That means the bottle contains less than a 30 day supply. Plus there is all the nasty warnings that go along with it. I’m not (desperate enough) ready to accept “uncontrollable bowel movements” as a side effect of any weight loss program.

I also logged onto lapband.com  to find out about that. You need to have a BMI higher than 40, which I don’t. Or, you can have a BMI 35 or higher (I do) along with a severe medical condition (I don’t).

I guess it’s up to me, along with diet and exercise. When will I think I’m worth it to do something? Why doesn’t the weight just come off? Shouldn’t thinking hard about losing weight burn some calories?

Will this new realization that I am fat spur me into losing the weight? Fourteen pounds is not enough to lose. I am behind in my goal. I wanted to lose a pound a week. I should have lost 24 pounds by now. Remember when I was ambitious enough to think maybe I should aim for 2 pounds a week? What happened to that motivation?

Ten pounds. I can do it, right?

Steve and I started walking again. And we were talking about how I was going to be able to keep walking next week at the workshop. It goes from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and in my off hours I have other commitments such as grading student work. Will I be able to find time to walk? I am going to try. This has always been my downfall — I fill my schedule so much with things that require just sitting that I don’t get the exercise I need. This is how I gained my weight in the first place.

In recent months, I realized one of the main changes in my life is the amount of exercise I do as a natural part of my life. I’m not talking about artificial means of getting exercise, like setting aside time to go to a gym. I mean exercise that is a secondary benefit to something I already do because I enjoy it.

When I was a kid, I had a lot of secondary-benefit exercise built into my day. I was the drum major of the marching band. I was a cheerleader. I had ballet, tap and jazz lessons. I didn’t do these things because they were great exercise. I did these things because I liked to do them. The fact that by doing them, I was exercising, was something I didn’t even consider.

As I grew older, I became more sedentary. This past year, especially, I have spent a lot of time sitting with a computer on my lap. I had things to do. And while I enjoy writing and working on my computer, exercise is not a secondary benefit.

So I’ve been looking for opportunities to work exercise back into my life as a secondary-benefit. One thing I enjoy doing is spending time with my husband, and we both really enjoy starting our day by taking some time for just the two of us and going for a walk. Except hubby broke his butt, and the kids are still in school, so we haven’ t been doing a lot of walking.

But last night, after Steve had retired to the couch, he asked me to help Autumn stop the riding lawn mower. And I did, but after I shut it off, I tried to push it into the garage. As I was turning the wheel, I turned it too far and ended up breaking the steering arm that guides the wheels. This, Steve said, is why he is the only one who mows are lawn.

Today, I reminded Steve that I like mowing the lawn. We still have a push mower, and it would be a great way to mow our lawn, do something I enjoy, and get that secondary-benefit.

And so, this afternoon, I changed to jeans, tennis shoes and a tank top. I went into the garage, retrieved the mower and started it up. I mowed around the flower beds in the front yard because you can get closer to them with a push mower than you can a riding mower. When that was done, I went to the far side of the house and began pushing the mower back and forth. There was a big difference from what it felt like when I was pushing the mower in the shady areas of our lawn, and when I was pushing our mower in the sunny areas.

Zeus, our chocolate lab, watched me while relaxing in the shady areas.

I had just stepped under the trees in the back of our yard, and I was seriously considering mowing just under the trees for a while, when I saw something move in the corner of my eye.

Earlier, I had inadvertently pushed a stick with the mower, and when I saw the stick move, I thought “snake.” But it was just a stick. This time, I was thinking “stick,” and it was a snake. I do not like snakes. I really do not like snakes. Especially when they are crawling into my bed (which is what actually happened a long time ago, and no I don’t mean a guy who is sleezy and acts like a snake. I mean a real snake, the gardner variety, and after I put on my winter coat and gloves, I grabbed the snake by the tail and threw it outside. Unsatisfied, I followed it outside and grabbed a shovel, and let’s just say that there are many reasons I don’t like snakes, and I shared those many reasons with that particular snake.)

And that’s when I decided I enjoyed mowing in the sunny areas of the yard too.

I mowed for an hour. I am sweaty and hot and a blister formed and popped on the palm of my left hand. And the yard is still not completely mowed. (Did I mention we own approximately an acre of land?)

I have not given up. I came inside to get a much needed drink. And to relax just a bit, and then I will go back out and finish mowing. Or at least do some more mowing.

I already have proof my idea is going to do wonders for my ultimate goal — losing weight. I am already more attractive (wait for it) to horseflies. I have the bites to prove it.

So what are some other ideas for natural exercise? Things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator and parking further away from where you want to go instead of circling for a “good” parking spot. Any other ideas?

Someone was making a photo quilt for my husband’s grandmother, and I was supposed to supply a family photo that included my husband, me and our four kids. I lined us all up on our couch, set the timer on my camera and snapped the photo. Then I checked the photo out, and I decided the photo would not work. My hair needed cut, and my butt looked too big. It seemed to spread out along the couch. It was the widest part of my body. I didn’t provide the photo to the quilt-maker.

As I looked at the me in that picture, I realized something I didn’t want to know — I was fat. That was around October 2004.

It turns out that it is all a matter of perspective since, about two years later, in July 2006, I was in another family photo, and after the image was snapped, I realized I was even fatter.

And, looking back at that attempt at the photo for the quilt, I realized I wasn’t really that fat in that photo. I was a little overweight, but I wasn’t obese. Now, I’m obese, and trying to keep from becoming morbidly obese.

This is one of my problems. I don’t have a good sense of my own body size. I think of myself as skinnier than I really am. And then I’m confronted with photographic proof, and I have a hard time adjusting my thoughts to take in the reality.

When I was really the size of the quilt-photo, I thought I was big because I was thinking of myself as smaller than that. But now I have the new photo and I’m bigger, and I would love to be back to the size I was in the quilt photo. So now, in comparison to my new reality, I feel like the quilt photo was skinny. Of course, that is part of my warped sense of body size working there. Is it ever possible to have a truthful and healthy sense of your body size?

I find myself comparing my body size to other women I know. Am I bigger than her? Smaller? Is that what I look like? I’m never quite sure. I don’t know.

So, let’s take a look at where I am — in pictures. I’ll add more as I find them and think about them.

To start, I want to talk about the photo I have as a header for this blog of my dad and I. I was 16, and the photo is circa 1986. I had a horrible perm, but my body size was healthy, and it looks especially so juxtaposed next to my dad’s unhealthy body size. My mom took this photo, and we were in Arizona. My dad probably didn’t like the photo, and he definitely would have hated me posting it on the Internet. For one thing, he is showing his belly, something he didn’t do in public. You can also see the nitroglycerin patch on his chest. My sister thinks if I post this photo of Dad, I should post photos of me that I hate too, and I will try to do that.

The next photo is when I was in high school. I was a cheerleader and the drum major in band. (Go Vikings!) I was also a bit of a nerd, but I didn’t really look like a nerd. This photo was taken in 1989, and I was a senior.

Here’s a family photo taken in May 2004 at my niece’s wedding. Other than when I was pregnant, I didn’t really think I had a weight problem until 2004, which is when I started gaining weight. But right now, I’d be happy to be back at this weight. Although I also realize camera angle plays a part too.

For instance, in the next photo, taken January 2005 with my mom, I look pretty skinny, if I do say so myself.

Notice, however, that I am standing sideways. In another photo, taken the same day, I don’t look as skinny when I am facing the camera directly and my hips are included in the picture.

I’ll post more photos from different times in the future.

 Updated Jan. 10, 2008: 

This photo documents the last time I wore my “fat pants.” At this point, I have lost 25 percent of my goal: