Pudgy Factor

Pudgy Factor

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I honestly can't say that I've battled a weight problem. I used to be the skinny tall kid up until I reached 15 or so -- then I started to gain some weight, but only a comfortable amount. During my teen years I maintained the same weight, all though high school and afterwards. It was when I approached mid-twenties that I started to gain more weight. I became increasingly sedentary, especially at my current job. I've been at this job for over 2.5 years, and gained about 15 lbs during that time, which is outrageous.

When you've got a tire around your body and you're sitting, it's tough. It's hard to breathe. When you stand tall, you can barely see your toes, because the tire's getting in the way.

My current job is rather stress-inducing, and school had been tough. Especially taking advanced level calculus courses! I spent most of my free time infront of the TV, munching on snacks, continuously, without acknowledging how much I had eaten. Toward the latter part of 2003, I casually logged into a website and calculated how much I had consumed in one day. I kept track meticulously for about 10 days, and realized that on average, I was consuming about 2500-2700 calories. For a woman my size, that's a lot of calories. And even with that many calorie-consumption, I wasn't eating much veggies and fruits, and was nutritiously unbalanced.

I exercised moderately, maybe 2-3 times a week. I decided not to push myself into doing something I wasn't ready to enjoy, like running 7 miles or something, because that would make me lose interest quickly, and we all know how short my attention span is! I also stopped eating while watching the telly. That was hard. My mouth felt empty. At school, I also tried to park on the high parking lot at school -- where you have to climb up a ziggurat like staircase (perhaps 4-5 stories?) to get to the car (Glendale College is notorious for the hike-trail to the parking lot). Since last April, I dropped about 13 lbs, and now I am no longer in the overweight catagory, as indicated by the BMI index. I'm trying to lower that and get into the early 20's on that scale -- 21 or 22 perhaps. I have also decided to chime in on Lauren's recent decision to lose 10 lbs by September. I have decided to join in on the fun and see if I can lose 10 lbs by Labor Day, and hopefully another 10 by the end of this year, as I did set as a 2004 New Year's resolution to lose a certain amount of weight and become a fit individual. We'll see how that goes -- if it goes well, it may be the first New Year's resolution ever to be a success.