Welcome to my Blog.

This is the first blog I've ever attempted to do. :o) So pardon me if it sucks. lol.

My blog is going to be about losing weight. I've been losing weight since December and have had a lot of success. So this blog will be about my success and the changes in my life it's created. It will also be about the challenges that it presents.

Now let's get some context or perspective here. I'm 26 years old and I live in Nebraska. Coincidentally, I live in the US city that has the highest number of restaurants per capita in the world. Isn't that special? Not exactly an ideal environment for losing weight. Nevertheless, I'm trying hard.

2003 has seen a lot of changes for me.

Let's start with divorce. I realized after 6.5 years of marriage that my marriage sucked and that I was doing all the work trying to make it better. I also woke up one day and realized that I only married my husband because I was so overweight that I thought no other man would be interested in me. That was a terrible thing for me to do to my husband, but he was a jerk anyhow, so I don't feel guilty about leaving him. :o) There's more to it than that, and lord knows I'm not perfect either. Buuuut...I'd have to say the blame is a 70/30 split, with him getting the lion's share.

Now about what you've really come to see...about my weight loss.

When I started losing weight, I weighed around 369 pounds. On a frame of about 5'9". Sooo not too good. I think my BMI was like 52 or something. Also not good. I was diabetic type II and also mucho depressed. I've been fat all my life though, so this was nothing new. I mean, I wore a size 24 dress in 8th grade, for crying out loud!!!

In about December, I became aware of a surgery called Lap-Band surgery. Ann Wilson had it. I think something like 70% of all weight loss surgeries in Europe are Lap Band surgeries. (more on that later). They put this band thingy around your stomach surgically and it helps you control how much you eat, by making you fuller sooner and keeping you fuller longer. After years of compulsive binge eating, my stomach had gotten huge and it took copious amounts to even begin feeling full. The band seemed like the perfect solution for me.

So I found a surgeon and went to a consultation. He told me to go on a high protein diet whilst awaiting approval and all that happy stuff. For the first time in my life, I believed I had a real shot at losing this damn weight!! Woot!!!

Soooo I started that high-protein diet and started losing weight. I didn't stick to it religiously either. Part of my lifestyle change has been to stop obsessing about food. More on that later. In the meantime, I also decided that I was gonna divorce my husband. Sooo I filed for divorce in late February and moved to my own apartment in early March. I was on my own for the first time in my life!!! Woot!!!!

I had the surgery in late June. The band is working out just fine. But between December and June, I lost about 100 pounds without the Band. Cool, huh? The power of motivation combined with 3 years of therapy...

Well now I'm down to about, I dunno, 250 or something. I don't own a scale. I didn't want to become obsessed with numbers. But one number that I will tell you about is my clothing size. I started at about a size 44...now I'm down to 18/20. :o) Ummm that's smaller than I was in 8th grade!!!!

My whole life is different now than it was 7 months ago. This is a pretty long first post, so I will post again today some more information and then we'll get to that whole daily blog thing. :o) Thanks for visiting my blog!!!