Five Pounds at a Time

I usually don't gain weight. I stay on the same weight no matter what I eat, or whether I exercise or not. I always stay within five pounds of my weight. Some might say I'm lucky. I know I am blessed. But there were two times in my life when I did gain weight, well, three actually, and two of them were the birth of my two daughters and the third one was when I was suffering from depression caused by hypothyroidism. Ever since I started taking my thyroid medicine I have stayed pretty much at the same weight I was after my 3 weight gains. I have struggled with the thought of having to loose 40 lbs. It seems like such a large number. After battling with IBS in college I was able to get accustomed to the kinds of foods that I can safely eat and I try to stick to that. I don't like to diet, and I don't exercise too much and I drink a lot of Cola.

About a month ago I went to the doctor to get a refill on my thyroid medicine. The nurse took my blood pressure and asked me to step on the scale. I closed my eyes and told the nurse, "This is the most painful part of the doctor's visit" With my eyes still closed the nurse said out loud. "175 lbs." I opened my eyes in shock and smiled. "I lost weight!" I exclaimed. I couldn't believe it. I had not done anything different, or so I thought. That day I decided I would start a weight loss goal of 5 lbs a month. 40 lbs seems like such an impossible goal, but 5 lbs seems so doable. So I decided to give it a try.

A couple of weeks passed by and my daughters decided they wanted to weigh themselves. A friend of them was visiting and they all have fun measuring how tall they are against my kitchen wall, and comparing their weights as means to see who was bigger. I decide to play along and to my surprise I saw a 165 on my scale. I couldn't believe it, I hadn't even started doing anything to loose weight. Maybe it's because I've been drinking more coffee or eating smaller lunches, or maybe even since I have been bringing left overs to lunch instead of eating out, maybe it's because I haven't been eating as much late at night. But no matter what it was it worked. I must admit that seeing this new success sent me into a weird panic. Since Thursday I have eaten take out every day and I just weight myself and was 170lbs. The good news is that I am still weighing less than when I started. So today I start again. 5 lbs goal for the month of February. I will try to cook more, eat less take out and see how it goes.


If you are looking to loose some weight too, I encourage you to take on smaller goals. Five Pounds at a time is something that is doable. If we set a doable goal, when we reach it we feel good about ourselves and it encourages us to do even better . We can do it! So who's with me?