And the winners are....

I'd like to thank the academy... OMG I can't believe it!!! Because of all of your love and support I have won a 2006 Best of Blogs Award for the Best New Heath Blog!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! *I'm doing my happy dance now!* I just can't believe my little blog, intended as a platform for my rantings, has grown so popular. I thank you all, and dedicate this award to all of you chubby chicks of the world, working so hard to fight the fat right along side me (hehe, I feel like Camryn Manheim at the Emmys)! Check out the other blog winners too - there are some really great blogs to read.

I thought I'd take this time to recap the past year of my blogging experience. I started this blog with the intention of losing one pound for every reason I hated being fat. Well let me tell you, I apparently write too fast, lol. I've lost 33 pounds now and am already at reason 60. Oh well, weight loss doesn't have a time frame for me. I can't force it. In the past year I've had a lot of starts and stops on my journey - haven't we all? I was so gung-ho starting this blog back in Jan 2006, thinking the weight would fly off of me. Hehe, yeah right! Honestly, it took me more than six months to really get started. I started the blog at 297, within months I was up (yes up) to 315. I think I really wasn't ready to commit to losing weight when I first started. I guess I just thought that all I needed to do was write about my feeling and everything would take care of itself. So yeah, that didn't work. It was only after gaining weight that I realized I needed to re-access my plan. Once again I tried a program (WW) with little success. The more I thought about it, the more I realized a set program wasn't in the cards for me. I think I have a bit of a rebellious side, so I constantly push the limits of any diet plan I try, which usually means I end up sabotaging myself and gaining the weight back. So that brought me to my current plan - eat less, move more. So simple. No plan, no rules, no punishment, no failure. If I eat a cookie, so what, I ate a cookie. I don't beat myself up anymore over the little slips. I remind myself of my accomplishments - hey, I've lost 33 pounds!!! And I keep reminding myself of all of the reasons I hate being fat. You should do it sometime. Write out the reasons you hate being fat. Do you have 5, 10, 20, or 101 reasons you hate being fat? I think it's a good exercise to actually write them down. Makes your feeling so much more real. For me, I just need to look over my list and realize no amount of food is going to make me feel better about anything. I need to make me feel better. This list has been very motivating for me. It keeps me going when things get rough. It's helped me discover my eating triggers. I'm definitely an emotional eater - can't you tell? So instead of stuffing down my problems, as I had for years, I'm writing about them. Sure food still helps me at the end of a bad day sometimes, but it's not my only comfort anymore. I'm finding other means to comfort and care for myself. We all have pain sometimes, we all have a void sometimes, we all hurt sometimes, but food will only temporarily help. Eventually the serotonin high from the carbs wears off, eventually we go back to feeling bad again, eventually we need to eat more and more to satisfy that craving. And it just doesn't work. And we end up fat and miserable. I can't tell you what will work for you. Maybe you need structure in your plan. Maybe you need the support of a friend. Maybe you need to exercise like a fiend. Maybe you just need to write down your feelings to deal with the pain of everyday life. I don't know. We all need to search within ourselves and find out what we really need to heal our wounded souls. Only then can we start to tackle our weight. So here I am, 33 pounds down, many more to go, but very optimistic of the journey that lies ahead. Thank you so much for listening to my reasons why I hate being fat. Hopefully I can inspire or motivate you to eat less and move more and to cope with life in a different way this time around. This has been a very enlightening year, I hope this coming year is just as good. I wish all of you good luck and happiness! You can do it, you're worth it!