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This is my 9 year-old son Samuel. He really likes the blog thing and wanted his picture published here. He wanted me to let you know that his weight is: 87 pounds.

It is appropriate to add here that he is a constant source of inspiration. I want to be an energetic mother to him and his older brother Brandon (12). I want to play with them and take them to amusement parks and be able to fit in the seats.

Back to the Past 2

The first picture is a side view from early January 2005.

The subsequent pictures were from Mid-January.

Back to the Past!! Last Holiday Season

Christmas time is so much fun. You get to see some of your family and you all eat together. Last Christmas, I had started a serious diet after Thanksgiving and was really proud of myself in this photo. I had already lost about 15 pounds.

Weight: 285

The previous 30 I had lost were a little different. Okay, I admit it...I was addicted to diet cokes and smoking. In October of 2003, I quit smoking and got up to the 330 on the previous post. In January of 2004, I started thinking about getting the gastric bypass. Since I am a really thorough person, I began researching gastric bypass. One of my most informative sources was a lady who sat next to me at work. She had lost over 150 pounds with gastric bypass. She had only been at the office for a few weeks and was happy to tell me about her success. She looked thin, but had a lot of excess skin. I also noticed that her eating habits were really bad. She would eat half a strawberry and would be full. It didn't seem that healthy to me. I continued to probe and found out a few facts about the surgery:

• You must quit drinking beverages with carbonation (They stretch your stomach)
• You cannot eat steak for a year after the surgery (or any other coarse foods, as they will tear your stomach)
• You cannot consume foods with processed sugar
• You cannot sit down and eat a meal because your stomach will only hold about half a large strawberry
• You must take vitamins and supplements
• If you overeat, you barf and could seriously injure yourself (while she worked at the office, my friend was out twice getting surgery for a hernia).
• You cannot undo the surgery easily (this is something you will live with for the rest of your life unless you want to go through another risky surgery)

These facts, coupled with the high mortality rate of the surgery, made me give pause. I didn't eliminate the surgery as an option completely, I just decided to try some of the post-surgery guidelines ahead of time. I immediately quit sodas.

Quitting sodas was very, VERY difficult. I was inspired by 1 thing and it was that if I could quit smoking (as I had) then I could do ANYTHING. Quitting smoking was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. The way I quit smoking was to psyche myself out. I said to myself, "You will never quit again." The reason I said that was that, up to that point, I would quit and get through the hardest part (the first two weeks) then just start smoking again. I had done that like 10 times! So, I said to myself, "You will never quit again. If you start again, that is it, you are Rebecca the smoker."

It worked. I have not smoked since October 7th, 2003. Therefore, although quitting my 7 diet cokes-a-day habit was very difficult, it was doable. From January 2004, when I quit sodas, through November 2004 I lost 30 pounds and made no other changes to my diet or otherwise.

After Thanksgiving 2004, I started eating right. And lost another 15 pounds (above).

The picture below are a few days after Christmas... The front view:

Starting Point -

This was the all-time highest weight ever. I showed my mother this picture and she said, "What a beautiful smile!"

All I can say to that is "MOTHERS!"

This picture was taken around January-ish of 2004. I weighed in at 330 pounds. Yes, that is what I said- three-hundred and thirty pounds! Size 26/28 clothes were often too small on me. And I felt sluggish all the time.





Date: January 2004
Weight: 330 pounds

Date: November 2004

Weight: 300 pounds

At this point, I was beginning to feel a lot better. I was at 300 pounds and starting to get some energy back. When you are that round, you don't realize that you are that round.

You may be saying, "30 pounds in 10 months, what the hell is going on with you?" And all I have to say is that I had quit smoking in October of 2003 and quit drinking sodas in March of 2004. Those were the only changes I had made up to that point. Around this time, inspired at how much better I felt after losing 30 pounds, I got serious about weight-loss.