Last summer my husband broke his wrist in a training class –
apparently the police dog liked his wrist a little too much. Being a guy he figured he could wrap his
wrist and it would heal. About a month
later the wrist started to swell again so he finally went to the doctor. Sure enough it was broken and apparently he
would have healed it himself had he had a larger brace on it (which he ended up
getting rather than casting it) but while he was there the Dr called him out on
his weight. I had been telling him for
MONTHS that he needed to lose some weight but his excuse was always “I don’t have
the time to go work out as much as I would need to.” He never listened to me that if he watched
what he ate he would get great results but when the Doctor said that he needed
to watch what he ate (since he was older and working out would not help much)
he finally listened.
At this point I felt a little bad that he was going to have
to go on a diet and here I was still eating McDonalds and whatever else I
wanted with no consequence (granted I was still nursing so I could afford some
extra calories). I made a deal with Mark
that I would change my eating habits with him so he wouldn’t have to do it
alone. All fast food was a no-no, soda
was gone, Mark gave up his sweet tea (which he substituted with splenda water –
gross!), fish and chicken was readily stocked in the house as well as lots of
veggies.
We never did get a good “starting weight” on him cause he
refused to step on the scale but I have a pretty good idea. I still had a few pounds to lose from my
pregnancy so my starting weight was 152 (pre-pregnancy was 148). I set myself a goal weight of 140 and no less
than 135 cause I never dreamed I would ever lose more than that and didn’t want
to set myself up for failure.
Weight started falling off of me quicker then Mark, which I
credited to the nursing, but he lost 15 pounds in the first month. When I hit 140 within the first month I was
shocked, then I hit 135, then 130 and I was getting a little worried that I was
losing too much weight. At that point
every morning I weighted light I ate McDonalds for lunch to counteract it. Right now (7 months after the “change”
started) I am weighing in consistently at 127 (although I at one point hit 124
and ate horrible to gain that weight back).
Mark ended up losing at least 30 pounds (since we don’t have a starting
number we can only go off what his first weigh in was).
My sister told me when I started to lose weight to keep in
mind that I will look good no matter what, that when I get thinner I will still
think I need to lose more so be careful.
For once my sister was right. As
the weight dropped my weight limit dropped lower and lower. I began striving for a lower number each
day. Eventually I realized what was
going on and reminded myself that I couldn’t lose more weight without being too
thin. Still today I look down and find “pudginess”
especially around my waist and think I can lose a few more pounds to get rid of
that but I know that I will actually have to exercise that off (something that
I really don’t want to have to do).
I’m not trying to brag or say “look at me”, rather show that
changing your behavior really does work, anything is possible. I figured I would really have to work to lose
5 or 10 pounds and ended up losing 25 in 4 months. This is also coming from someone who knows
nothing about weight loss or any training what so ever but I am very good at
self control (except when it comes to what comes out of my mouth – but that is
for a different day).
AFTER
BEFORE
(disregard the horrible hair and sunglasses - this was the only picture I could find)
