Hi Gang! My name is Stephani. I am a 35 year old mother of 4 children, ranging from the ages of 9-15 years old. I have struggled with my weight for most of my life.
In high school I was not obese, but I did carry some extra weight on me. I was never thin like some of my friends. I would often go on Slim Fast diets to drop a few pounds. It worked for a while; however, in my adulthood, slimfast never worked for me. After each child came an increase in weight gain as well. I found out several years ago that I have hypothyroidism, so my metabolism has been really slugglish. My husband has commented that he has never seen someone work so hard and eat so little to not lose weight.
Over the fall/winter from 2003-04, I was sick and tired of being fat. I weighed 206 at the time. Between the fat double chin pic on my driver’s license, or the horrendous video that I saw of myself, I hated the way that I looked. I started taking ECA stack, and I dropped almost 40 lbs. I was down to a size 12, weighed 168 lbs, and I was feeling great. I never had any problems with ECA, but I took it for a long period of time, and it seemed to quit working. I could not get past the size 12. I quit taking the stack, and over the course of the next 3 years, I gained back all of my previous weight plus more.
By January of 2007, I weighed around 226, so I jumped on the low-carb bandwagon. Low carb has always worked for me; however, it has always left me missing the occasional sweet or carb loaded food. I dropped about 20 lbs just by cutting out my carbs. I would scrape toppings off of fast food pizzas and slide them onto a low carb tortilla. I would throw away the buns when eating a hamburger. This worked well for me for a while….. Then, I got bored! I was tired of eating that way, so I fell into my normal routine.
What was my normal routine? Well, most of the time I never ate 3-6 meals per day. I would wake up in the morning and pour myself some coffee. That would keep me satisfied until late afternoon. Then, I would eat an occasional sandwich or something else around 5 o’clock. Next, I would make dinner or go buy fast food for the family. This was my typical day to day cycle. I thought my metabolism was slow so I had to skip meals. The problem was that my metabolism was slow BECAUSE I had skipped meals.
Before I joined Weight Watchers in January 2008, I kept seeing those ads on television. This might sound a little silly, but I thought Weight Watchers would be no different than any other diet I had been on before. I had always considered WW some boring little place to go weigh-in every week. Boy, was I wrong! When WW was hosting one of their online specials, I joined for a free week to try it out. I thought the points system was quite an interesting approach, considering I could eat whatever I liked as long as I planned for it. I thought “What the heck. There’s nothing to lose!”, so I joined WeightWatchers.com.
Now, I’m hooked! I absolutely LOVE their online tools, from building a recipe to entering my foods for the day. I eat 6 times per day, and I can actually feel my stomach growling if I haven’t eaten in a while. Is that strange or what? I never felt my stomach growl much before… even when I would skip several meals! Now, my sister is hooked on it, too! After being on Weight Watchers for a few weeks, she decided to give it a try. I think she’s glad that she did, too!
Why the website? Why not! I love being online, and I would really like to see our progress help others. It is a real struggle to lose weight. I hate that people think just because you are overweight that you eat a lot. This is such garbage. People are overweight for different reasons. We are not all the same.
My hope is that we will inspire others to take the step to lose weight like us. Weight loss does not have to be so hard. We take it one day at a time. It didn’t come on overnight (although it often feels that way), so we must give it time, patience, and perseverance.
Thank you very much!