My First Weigh In

So this morning was the moment of thruth: my first weigh in! I knew I had lost weight because I could feel it. My personal goal was to hit the 5 pound mark. Given my WW history I have always had a big loss the first week (though I'm guessing about half of that is really water weight). The receptionist who weighed me did a double take when she looked at the reading, but didn't tell me what the number was. I assumed by her reaction that it was a good one, but I almost fell over when she told me that I was down 6 pounds!!! Crazy! I lost 6 pounds my first week!

The trend is that I'll still lose a little extra the second week but not as much as the first. I'm not sure if setting my second week goal to be 4 is too high. It would be nice to have a 10 pound head start under my belt after only two weeks, that will have erased the damage I did to myself the past couple months. So this week I am shooting for 4 pounds. After that my goal will be the suggested 2 per week.

My Health Report

I got the lab results back from my physical a few weeks ago. Apparantly I am "healthy". Here was my breakdown:

Cholesterol was 141
LDL (Bad Cholesterol) was 83
HDL (Good Cholesterol) was 43
Tryglycerides 77
Blood Sugar 93

Good was checked next to cholesterol overall, I guess because my number was less than 200. Technically speaking,though, my good cholesterol is on the low side (less than 50 mg/dL for women is considered low according to the American Heart Association and to be considered "protective against heart disease" it should really be above 60).

The ratio between overall cholesterol to HDL is even more important than the overall number alone. The smaller the difference the better according to The Harvard Medical School Family Guide. My ratio is 3.3 so I am at about half the average risk going by just my numbers alone. Which is good, I am happy to see that.

Still I am not content to sit back, kick my feet up and think I don't have to work at my health. Emotional health (I believe) has a profound impact on your physical health. So even if my weight did nothing more than make me depressed, it's reason enough to do something about it.

However, I do realize that there is more going on with my weight than the fact that it makes me sad. I am winded by small amounts of normal behavior, I'm tired a LOT, playing with my children totally wipes me out to the point that I feel I hold them back from the proper amount of activity they should be having, my knees hurt...all due to my weight. That to me isn't the sign of a healthy person. And I'm not so naieve to believe that all because my genetics may be on my side as far as my cholesterol goes, that my weight does not pose an additional risk of heart attack, stroke and diabetes. One risk does not get nullified by another. Weight is still a risk factor.

So yes, I've got a clean bill of health. But health is not something that just happens to us. My blood sugar and cholesterol may be okay now, but if I take that as a free pass to neglect watching myself it might not be that way next year (or however long it takes to catch up). We have the power to improve or degrade our health by how we live our lives, and so I will continue to work on mine even though my numbers came back as "normal". I have enough excuses to keep me from taking care of myself, I'm not going to use good test scores as another one.

My New Book

After dropping my oldest off at camp today I scooted over to Barnes and Noble to look for a new book (I was caught waiting a half hour for her to get out last week with no book, it was terrible!). My youngest was napping soundly in her stroller so I was able to peruse the sections I wanted to before having to hit the Thomas the Tank Engine table in the kid's section.

Of course I headed straight to the diet section. I was trying to find anything that promoted a natural, whole food way of eating/detoxing/weight loss. I picked up The Gut Flush and The Fat Flush by Ann Louise Gittleman. Interesting, but I'm not quite there yet. I might need to revisit them in time. Anyone out there try this system at all??? If so any feed back?? I am curious.

Anyway, then I move over to the self help section to look for books on compulsive over eating and binge eating disorder. I am somewhat in denial when it comes to this stuff. As a teen I went through the binge and purge deal. The purging tapered off but I'm not so sure I'd consider myself a true binger these days. I tend to do that mostly after I'm coming off some diet plan that didn't work. The binging kind of morphed into compulsive overeating such as what I did when my in-laws came over. I know that I do this, but never really considered it an "eating disorder" per say. No, I just considered it being fat and lazy. I've read enough books to know that I fit the profile of a food/sugar addict and a compulsive eater and realize it is a real problem, but still I just never classified myself as such. I guess that's what denial is all about. Yet somewhere deep down I continue to arm myself with information in this area in the event that one day I am able to make amends with myself and actually confront my issues.

Anyway, There were all the text book like books, the ones written by doctors and psychiatrists and such. Nothing particularly struck me in this section. Then I came across a narrative type book, Secrets of a Former Fat Girl. How to Drop Two, Four (or More!) Dress Sizes-and Find Yourself Along the Way. BINGO, just what I was looking for.

I'm past the quarter mark and not quite mid-life, but I've been going through some type of life crisis these days. That's a whole other post though. Anyway, losing weight and finding myself in a personal story written by a regular girl who went through this sounded perfect. So I paid my money and off I went to pick up my daughter from camp.

I was a half hour early again, but it was good because I wanted to start on my book and knew I would have no time for it once I got home with the kids. I almost started crying as I read through the Introduction. There were so many eerie parallels, it was as if she was writing this about me. In fact, she has written the book that I always dreamed of writing...a book based on some personal triumph. Even her style of writing is fun and how I'd want it to be. But most of all it spoke to me. My life, my thoughts and fears, my hopes and dreams.

So anyone out there looking for a good book on how one chick overcame her Fat Girl mentality and took control back over her life, I highly recommend this one even though I only read through the introduction! I have that much faith that the rest of it is going to be just as good. I'll let you all know....