Time for some changes

Hi everyone! My name is Alice and I live in the suburbs of Madrid, Spain (hence my screen-name Madridmom). My husband Tim had some health issues in the first 6 months of this year that had him in severe pain. He was able to find the source of the problem and take care of it, but while he was dealing with the intense pain, he was not able to do much of anything active. He began to look at his general physical condition and his overweight condition with a new perspective. He decided that he needed to do something drastic to lose some weight and get more healthy. Since last May he has lost several pounds (I think at least 20) and has gone from wearing size 42/44 waist pants to wearing size 36! His neck size in dress shirts has gone from 17.5 to 16/16.5. He tried to encourage me to join him in eating more healthy and exercising, and has been nothing but positive when I have made any little progress, but he didn't push and I didn't make any real lasting changes.

My friend Karen sent me the link to this blog challenge and for some reason I think it is the push that I need to get me moving in the right direction. I have some of the same issues that some of you have already mentioned .... snacking, sugar "addiction", love to bake and am a pretty good cook.... especially comfort food. This time of year will be very difficult for me as I still plan to bake the special holiday treats that my kids look forward to. I will do my best to greatly limit my own intake of them. The biggest goal I have is to get regular exercise into my schedule. Tim has seen his results from walking an hour a day with weights and cutting way back on sugar and other carbs. His nightly dinner is normally a large salad.

When I was a child and all through high school I was incredibly skinny. In fact, the bullies used to call me names like Flatso and poke fun at how underweight I was. Most of that was probably due to my incredibly picky eating as a kid. In college I put on a few pounds and a few more after I got married. I basically plateaued at around 129-134. I would start to creep up to the higher 130's and then I would enter my 100% foolproof method for losing weight .... I would get pregnant. I spent the first 3 to 4 months with all day sickness and would typically lose 5-10 pounds, then work hard in the 2nd trimester to gain back what I had lost, and in the 3rd trimester almost all the weight gain would be all baby. With all my kids, I was back down to my starting weight within a few months of having the baby.

My husband and I are missionaries in Spain, and I put quite a bit of weight on during our 3 years of deputation, eating out in restaurants and in other people's homes. When I saw that I was over 150, I was shocked! I didn't know how I was going to get that off. We arrived in Spain in June 2002 the heaviest I had ever been. However, within 2 weeks I found out I was pregnant so, once again, I had that extra weight off within a year. My daughter is now 6 1/2 and between the weight i gained while on furlough in 2006, some depression /stress related eating during a difficult time of trial, and physiological changes as I go through the "change of life" and I have crept back up to that lifetime high again. There is just something about that magical number of 150 that shakes me up and since I have hit that number and more, I have decided that it is time to get those numbers down again and hopefully get out of the frumpy "fat clothes" and back into a more reasonable size again. I want to be attractive for my husband and healthy for my children and for myself.

Tim and I went walking today (I wish I could get points for the work I've done today .... but it was good for us to huff and puff together and talk out some important things as we walked.) He mentioned that he feels it is important for us to get rid of this "sobre peso" (extra weight) now and get into better shape while we are still in our 40's. It won't be any easier to do it when we are in our 50's ... which is right around the corner.

I look forward to "meeting" the rest of you ladies and hope we all reach our goals!