I have weighed 15 pounds too much for a long time now.
Over the years I played at different diets to get rid of those pounds but it seemed that if I ever did lose a few they would come back twice as fast as they left.
The important word there is ‘played’.
I quit smoking over a year ago, and for the first six months, I did very well at keeping the weight down and even lost three pounds.
Then, I am not sure how but in the next six months I gained an extra 15 pounds.
This was not good.
I was not feeling the benefits of not smoking, just carrying in two bags of groceries would get me out of breath.
Plus it was putting me into a dress size that I did not want to be in, partly because I just cannot afford a whole new wardrobe.
It was time to get serious about the diet game.
I am learning a lot from this game.
Apparently, I did not know as much as I thought I did about food, especially about the weight of it.
I bought a scale and discovered that there was a lot more cheese in an ounce than I thought – happily surprised, but there was a lot less beef in an ounce – sadly disappointed.
I am a meat and potatoes gal and love my cream gravy and cream sauces.
The diet world does not like cream. Okay, so then I would use butter on my veggies, but the diet world does not like that either. Too much fat they say.
So then I decided that I did not really need butter on that egg salad sandwich.
The word ‘compromise’ has taken on a whole new meaning for me.
I can have that brownie if I eat an all veggie supper. I have been eating a lot of vegetables lately.
I am also a couch potato and the little exercise that I played it was not doing too much.
When I got serious and did a more serious work out (not talking boot camp here) the weekly weight loss number grew.
Wow! That really encouraged me to keep it up.
I am beginning to think that this whole diet game is very much like real life.
If you want to do something you need to learn how to do it, get an education.
Small successes or pats on the back will make you work harder. You don’t need as much stuff as you thought you did.
You can get what you want, but you have to work for it.
Yep, sounds like real life to me!
by Lois Perepelitz
