Have too much champagne, kiss too many men, love too much, laugh too loud, throw caution to the wind and your inhibitions out the window. Life is happening now, not 10 pounds from now.

I don't have an abundance of will power, nor am I a mega strong person. I am definitely willful and strong headed, but those aren't the same things. Every decade of my life, I gained 100 pounds. By third grade I weighed 100 pounds, 200 by 8th grade, 300 in my 20's, 400 in my 30's and 460 before my ...

Have too much champagne, kiss too many men, love too much, laugh too loud, throw caution to the wind and your inhibitions out the window. Life is happening now, not 10 pounds from now.

I don't have an abundance of will power, nor am I a mega strong person. I am definitely willful and strong headed, but those aren't the same things. Every decade of my life, I gained 100 pounds. By third grade I weighed 100 pounds, 200 by 8th grade, 300 in my 20's, 400 in my 30's and 460 before my 40th birthday. Before Spark People, 500 in my 40's seemed inevitable and hopeless didn't begin to describe how I felt.

I have low thyroid (metabolism), fibromyalgia, a degenerative spine, herniated disks, pinched nerve bundles, arthritis, knee problems, and am bipolar. For several years, the pain and depression were too much for me. I resigned myself to life in my bedroom, where laying down hurt less.

Diets have done nothing more than torture me long enough to lose some weight and then regain even more. People seeing me gain weight back was even worse than being fat in the first place. Why would I torture myself starving, when it would do no good and I would regain the weight anyway? So, I kept eating and resigned myself to my situation.

Later I learned that I was practicing "avoidance," taking myself out of the game before I could fail anymore. Having failed since childhood, it hurt too badly to do the whole weight loss/weight gain dance again and again.

When you've got a lifetime membership to Jenny Craig, tried Nutri-System twice, Physician's Weight Loss twice, LA Weight Loss, Weight Watchers for 2 decades, joined several gyms, read all the latest diet books, tried the theories, fads and medications... still topping out at 460, nothing is left to believe.

I have always been very emotional about my weight. Everyone in my family, despite their own weight issues, found it necessary to bring attention to my weight problem as often as possible. I will skip the cruelties suffered in childhood and adulthood, but I wanted to be thin more than anything.

During my teen years, as soon as I got my allowance, I would head to the health food store to buy whatever magic potion was the latest miracle. Not even being old enough to drive a car, I would have to walk miles to get downtown, which was actually the healthiest thing I could have done for myself.

Until my late 20’s, I was obsessed and, as previously mentioned, bulimic. Food was my comfort when my dad died, when my mother died, when I had a rough day at school or at home, it kept me company, it was like a drug.

There did come a day, however, when it just became easier to stay in the house and hide from the world than to go out and suffer the looks and comments from people. My home was now my sanctuary and my prison, where for the last 20 years, due to increasing physical pain, I slowly stopped moving and ate for comfort.

I had heard of Spark People several times before I joined and even before I took it seriously. At the time, the mention of another site or book would make my eyes glaze over and my brain shut down in hopelessness.

In desperation, I signed up for Spark, but it would be another year or two before I realized it wasn't a diet and it had nothing to do with willpower. Besides the wonderful social support for a person unable to leave their home, I found fabulous tools. This site had the Spark Diet Steps that literally walked me through getting a foundation for a healthy lifestyle, not a quick fix diet. I tried one change at a time, swapping regular milk for organic, dinner plates for luncheon plates, and began ordering small. Each change gave me more yielded results and gave me excitement to try another.

I learned to track my food daily and get a reality check. Having grown up with bulimia, the cure left me binging without purging and still having “all or nothing” thinking. If I slipped up even a bit, the guilt would be unbearable. Eventually I would feel so guilty that I would binge as some convoluted way of trying to make myself feel better. One night I ate a small order of fried rice and the guilt started. I tracked the rice and found out that it fit into my meal plan. I hadn't overeaten! I learned two things: 1) Always order small 2) Always track your food for a reality check.

Eventually I made up my mind that I didn't want to live and die in my bed. I was going to have to move. My friends and family are very understanding of my pain issues, but living in bed is not a life I wanted for myself. I found a Nurse Practitioner, who set up in home physical therapy for me. Soon I was able to do a few simple things and created more from there. (I posted exercises for people in my condition in my blog.) I started with bed exercises and moved to using a roller chair in my kitchen and a stability ball. Movement wise, I’ve gone from bed ridden, to wheel chair, to a wheeled walker I call “Freedom.” As of 2010, I'm working out with a new arm cycle and am up to 5 miles in a workout. It is great to feel in control of something again. No matter how much I lose, my spinal degeneration is incurable, but I can do my best to live my best.

It honestly breaks my heart when I imagine others who may feel how I've felt in life because of weight. Sometimes I haven't even felt like a human female, but like an it or a monster. The self hatred and deprivation cycles with binging... Spark can change all of that. This isn't a site about learning to diet, it's a site about creating the life you want to live by making healthier choices one by one and building.

My Advice:

You don’t have to be perfect, you have to stick with it.

Decide on a goal every morning for that day. One day at a time is doable. Forget planning your life out or even tomorrow. You have to get through today first.

Make at least 10 minutes to work out. Functional fitness counts. If you are bed ridden, you would do well to try a few minutes of bed exercise at a time or maybe walking to the next room a few times a day. Something is always better than nothing.

Be the girl who orders small. Make a promise to yourself to order small, an appetizer, split a meal or use 9 inch luncheon plates at home.

Use your food tracker for a reality check.

Read and do the action steps to the Spark Diet. They walk you through setting up your healthy lifestyle.

Don’t wait to be thin to act thin. Life is happening now, not 10 pounds from now. Living it will help you lose weight and enjoy life.

I have lost 100 pounds and am very proud of that. I celebrated my 100 pound weight loss with a party of encouraging friends at a restaurant, where I continued my new practice of ordering a small appetizer instead of a large meal. When my dear husband gave me with a special piece of jewelry for a reminder of how far I had come, I made the joke that I was going to get a cardboard sign that said “Will diet for Tiffany's.”

It's been a long journey since my heaviest in 2004/2005, but here I am. Now I look for opportunities to move and know that food is not good or bad, friend or enemy. I’m not where I want to be yet and nowhere near skinny, but every day is getting better. Thank you Spark People!


Check out my team “Spark ON!”if you feel or have felt trapped by your body or weight. We can make healthy changes together one choice at a time.

Check out my team "Play to Lose" if you love to play games and meet people. This is a great team if you are homebound and want people to play with.


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Indygirl's words of wisdom:

"Baby steps still get you there... you just aren't too worn out to enjoy yourself along the way."

"If you got a traffic ticket would you break every traffic law the rest of the day? Then why toss the whole day over a slice of pizza?"

"Tea and sympathy, not cake and apathy."

"You don't have to be perfect you just have to stick with it."

"It is what you do consistently that shows."

"A healthy lifestyle is won by taking more steps in the right direction than the wrong one, not by being perfect."

"Never treat your body like a garbage disposal for leftovers."

"One slice of pizza is always going to have less calories than 2 slices of pizza."

"If your going to think 'I may as well', then you might as well think 'I may as well not'."

"Life is happening now, not ten pounds from now."

Read More About ~INDYGIRL (Updated February 9)

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