Feel free to join me

Hi ya'll. Did you know I'm having a baby in 36 days? Do you know what that means? That means that in about 40 days I really won't have an excuse to eat ice cream three times a day. It also means that in about 40 days I will know my new official starting weight for my diet. Now before you go all crazy on me that I can't diet while nursing I KNOW ! However I can eat healthy right. You see, with Brandon my thought was, "well if I can't do a 1200 calorie a day diet I may as well just do 5000 calories right?" So very very wrong. So while I realize this time around I can't diet, I also realize I can't eat 4 peoples shares of calories a day. So this time I will choose to go on about a 2000 calorie diet which I believe my doctor said was okay last time.

The next thing that I want to stress is that while I call it a diet, I don't actually plan to diet. I plan to go back to my healthy living lifestyle. I was doing great eating healthy and riding my bike and making both of those be an every day part of life. I look at it this way so that when my kids are older they never have to witness first hand my issues with weight. Food will always be viewed as a positive thing for us. While I don't expect my sons to ever struggle with weight like me, that doesn't mean I ever want them to watch their mom fret about portion control or do crash diets.

Now here is what I will be doing. I don't believe in following fad diets, ie Atkins, South Beach or the soup diet. I used to, until I realized I could only do that for so long before breaking down an screwing up. Plus I don't eat meat so fad diets in no way work for me. When I first started playing with the idea of eating healthy I found this website, www.sparkpeople.com. I played with it, it was free and I discovered I loved it. There are message boards and blogs and what not so you can actually talk to other people who are doing what you are. The whole idea of Sparkpeople is mainly that you can log on and count your calories. Since at the end of the day the best diet is just being smart about calories I chose this method. It worked great for a few months and then I got pregnant with Brandon. After Brandon I tried it again, but then we all know that I decided to forgo health for cookies. I figured I was making some tasty breast milk. Then I started reading Karla, I had my aha moment and I became serious about being healthy. I gave up soda (unless I was really sick), and I still ate what I wanted I was just responsible and learned portions. I found an exercise I loved rather then making myself go to the gym and be miserable I started riding my bike. For me that became as satisfying as a whole chocolate cake. There were some other changes I made too. In the beginning I only weighed myself once after a month. This forced me to notice the changes in my body with out basing it on weight. I lost 10 lbs. After that I started weighing in once a week on a designated day and taking pictures of it. I started blogging about it also. The blogging and the pictures combined where what kept me going the most. I realized that if I was public about my goals people would not only encourage me to achieve them but be there if I gave up and I am not the kind of person who likes to give up in front of people.

So this time around I will set my goals back to the same ones on Sparkpeoples daily goals. I will drink 8 glasses of water, give up soda daily and make an effort to talk to at least one person about my struggles each day. I will resume the original Phatso Photos and I will continue eating what I like just doing it portion controlled.

This time since I was actually at a place where I was happy when I got pregnant I have a starting goal. To get from where ever I was back to 160. This time I also have a secondary goal. I want to fit back into the jeans I fit into the day I found out I was pregnant. So! The day I start the diet, I will post a picture of me attempting to squish into those pants (it won't be pretty, they may not even pull up all the way) and then monthly aside from my weekly photos I will post a jeans progress photo.

I am inviting all of you to join me this time. I have great advice on recipes and other things to do. I can listen and really relate and understand to your struggles. While you don't have to be public on your blog and take photos I strongly encourage it. I really believe going public makes it harder for you to quit. I mean you can quit when only your best friend and mom know, but dammit when the world of skinny bloggers are looking on, you can bet your ass I'm not giving up!

I don't care what diet you choose. Personally fad diets will never work for me, because like I said they don't work for vegetarians and I almost always give in and eat those things I wasn't supposed to.

SO I've now given you 40 days notice. That is 40 whole days to think about losing weight. To think about finally making a real change. Time to figure out if you are ready for your aha moment or if your not ready to be serious.

Then I will make this offer, if enough people decide they are interested in doing this, I will start a separate blog for us. One where the invited authors can come and post weekly photos with me, recipes, discouragements, encouragements and so on. I don't expect the page will last forever, but I do think it will last just long enough to help some of us make some really positive changes in our lives. I will post the first awful horrible phatso photos for you all to see of me in my fatness and looking like a stuffed sausage in my jeans that way you can all feel brave going after me. You can all come up with your own clever names for your photos and we can make Tuesday be our picture day.

So let me know what you think. If it is something you want to do I will start the page now, get us all invited and we can start talking to each other about it and building up our encouragement. Then in 40 days bring it on! I will also take votes on the fun name of our page. Something funny and clever. This is a great time to delurk too. If you've been reading along and finally say hey thats something I can groove on, let me know! I'll add you based on the email you provide and make you an author on the blog!

If you would rather email me privately about joining you can do it here wilddreemer@yahoo.com. So if your doing South Beach, Atkins, Jenny Craig or just calorie counting come and join me on my quest to become healthy, before I pass my issues on to my kids. And also, I really want to wear those jeans again!