Alright, I finally did it...tonight's focus is Progress, NOT PERFECTION

I have been thinking of starting a blog forever.  I have been down a long road with the weight loss.  I've had lots of successes and lots of failures.  So my hope with this blog is that maybe I can inspire and/or help even just one person to start their own weight loss journey or their journey to become a better person.  I will talk a lot about weight loss but some just about how I am striving to become a better person.  So, let me start by saying I didn't have gastric bypass, I didn't do the hgH diet or take any sort of diet pills.  I did it the hard way.  Diet and exercise.  I did breastfeed for about half the time it took me to lose 57 pounds and at the very end I did a cleanse.  I started out my journey at 221 pounds.  Yikes I know.  But it is what it is.  The day after Thanksgiving 2010, I decided it was time.  It was time for me to be a better mother, time for me to be a better wife, time for me to be a better person.  And it was time for me to lose weight, or I was going to have to go back to work because my COBRA coverage was expiring on April 30.  And private health insurance companies don't like to insure obese people, especially ones with some not so great health history, albeit not related to being overweight.  So, I had a BIG WHY.  A big one.  That's your first step in this whole thing.  What's your WHY??  Do you want it enough to get out of bed and work out?  Do you want it enough to step away from the cheetos?  Do you want it???  Because until you want it, I mean really want it, you will never get there. What's your WHY?  My why was I knew from the day Sydney was born I was not going to be the fat mom.  I couldn't do that to her.  But I also knew I wanted another one.  So I lost down to almost what I was when I had her, got pregnant with Griffin, and managed to not gain nearly as much as I did with Sydney.   So that was my why.  The first thing I did was I slowly phased things out food wise.  I focused every day on not some specific hard diet, but instead on simply eating better than I did the day before.  This method gives you forgiveness to mess up.  If you mess up today, all you have to do to fix it tomorrow is eat better than you did today.  I did this on my own for a couple of weeks and decided with Rob that it would be best for me to work out with a trainer for a few weeks.  I signed up to work out with a trainer for eight weeks.  Here it's not that expensive to do.  We easily made up what we were paying for my training by not eating out.  My trainer recommended one of two diets.  Paleo or the Crossfit diet.  http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/cfjissue21_May04.pdf  Well, I couldn't see myself sticking to the Paleo diet.  I have enormous respect for those who can.  So, I chose the Crossfit diet, which to my knowledge is very similar to the Zone plan.  This plan worked very well for me.  I started out with one cheat meal a week, but occasionally had two when someone unexpectedly invited us to dinner.  I was, however, so serious at first that I did do things like say, yes we can come to dinner, Rob and the kids love pizza but I'm working on losing weight so I hope you don't mind  I'm just gonna drive through Wendy's and get a salad before we come.  I kept my eye on the prize for 5 months.  It wasn't easy but every week I lost weight.  Sometimes a little sometimes a lot, but always a little.  When I left for vacation in May I weighed 164.  That's where I'll pick up next time...the gaining back of 14 pounds, why I lost control...and how I have finally gotten back on the wagon and lost all but 4 of those 14 pounds.