The weekends are so much more special to me now that I'm working. It just feels so good!

Major Life Changes - we've all had them. Mine right now is going back to work - full time! Wow what a change a week makes!!

What major life changes have you had and how did it effect your diet efforts? what did you do about it? Did you change your schedule? give yourself a pep talk?

Major life changes can be so many things: getting a new job/home/. Getting married, moving, death/birth in the family, or maybe as something like a change in the season.

For me I knew I could not "do it all" all my first week at all. I am on a 8 week training course - my life is still not going to be "normal" for another 8 weeks - we are in a different side of the building (it's more like a city!!!) I am right next to the best cafeteria in the world! I also have a different work shift. When I finish my training I wlll be working 10:30-7pm M-F.

So do I just wait till my 8 weeks are done? I don't think so!!! I have already gained 7 lbs in 2 weeks - at that rate - I don't want to know!!

So today I plan - I plan around my major life change. I try - and I keep trying.


Dana

Major life changes -- this pretty much describes my life right now. I'm going to be moving this summer. I don't know where yet, but I will move somewhere. I'm taking a break from living with the family for two weeks. I've had one week, and have one week left. It's so peaceful here. No doors slamming, no tv late at night. I can get to sleep at night. No cold stares. I feel so different this week. I've been so tense. My body is feeling so much more relaxed now. I've reached goal, but haven't weighed for almost a week since I am without my scale. I've been eating more, especially chocolate. I haven't quite learned to separate tension/relaxation from eating which is a good insight. I've learned to associate tension with not eating and relaxation with eating. I still have some healthy habits to develop as I make this adjustment. I want to be more independent of my family (parents and 6 siblings), which is why I will be moving. I'm also pretty old to be living with my parents (28). It's time. I think it will benefit all of us. I might want to go for some counseling sometime this summer too. My focus is on living a healthy life. I've had some time to reflect this week on what I want my life to look like and what I don't want it to look like. I'm going to stick with my present job because I like it. I can't live at home much longer and I don't think it would be healthy to do so. I can't imagine living there forever stuck in the same family dynamics. I think I could love my family more if I had a little space apart from them.

So, I can't say I've adjusted yet. I've been overeating this week. It may take me a little while to adjust. I did go to the grocery store and buy healthy food -- chicken, fruits, OJ, veggies, meat, cheese, bread, and I've been eating these. I cooked up some chicken in different ways and put the meals in the fridge and freezer yesterday so I don't have to cook everyday. I have healthy food available and water. I'm just taking it easy for a while -- not really being strict at all. I have been exercising and walking.

What's happening with me is that my focus is changing, expanding. The big picture is healthy living, but till now, it's been almost exclusively focused on the food and exercise part of healthy living. Now, my focus is expanding to include relationships and living situations. I've been soul-searching.

my life is about to change, and i'm going to welcome it with open arms!!

i graduate in june and will then be working full time. at the end of august, i'm moving about 2 hours away (to santa rosa, ca) and david and i will have our own place!

these changes are going ot be SO good for me. the school schedule runs me ragged and leads to bad eating habits as well. i can't WAIT!

Jeanne...I imagine that's the hardest part of a weight loss journey, when you get to the end and the focus is no longer on losing weight. It's then when you have to focus on the other aspects of your life that aren't working, and that can be the most painful. I admire your strength. You have really evolved.

On to Slimdown's question...The biggest life change that affected my weight was when we moved to Italy. I was SO excited! Three years traveling, exploring, maybe even learning a new language (I learned all the curse words, anyway ), and the idea that my children could be exposed to another culture at such a young age. I'd been warned about culture shock, but I knew it wouldn't happen to ME. After all, I was READY to jump into local culture and I was a relatively intelligent, educated person. I had this notion that culture shock only happened to narrow-minded people.

WRONG! And because I wasn't expecting it to hit me, culture shock hit me doubly hard. To add to that, I didn't feel comfortable talking about it because I STILL thought something was wrong with me. I "solved" it by turning to food, and lots of it. I gained about 30 pounds my first year in Italy. (Once the culture shock wore off, I lost it, but through all the wrong ways...starvation, mostly.)

In the fall I moved from a place I hated and had lived at for 9 years, to a place I like (although I'm not planning on being here forever). I made the decision that since I was starting life in a new place, I'd start a new way of eating. So far it's worked pretty well!

Well this is not a MAJOR life change but it's enough for me. I have decided to take the next 5 weeks off from school. Maybe more. I thought I had found something that I would really love doing, but right now the industry is really bad, and doesn't look like it's going to get much better any time soon. I have also been having a hard time in class (Actually I am totally lost) so in turn I'm staying up even later at night to study more, I'm tired and cranky, and not to mention STRESSED out. Which all leads to bad eating and no energy for exercise. With the next 5 weeks off I can spend time with my kids enjoying them and everything else. I can just relax for awhile, and think whether or not I want to keep at what I'm doing, or decide to go to another school. So starting this Thursday right after my final, I am free for 5 weeks.

Most of my major life changes occurred last year. I moved from living in a flat in the middle of the city to a 20 acre farm in the middle of a forest! That was a big change but I've loved every moment and I can't imagine going back to living on top of each other ever. Here we have only 3 ppl in our road and we can barely even see the neigbours. At night the sky is alive with stars and critters roaming, I've seen so many wild animals in the last year it's been great. Instead of sitting in traffic I tend my goats, cows and deer.
The next biggest life change was the birth of my son last July, I'm still learning to cope with that one! The next change was to start a healthy living plan and exersize daily. I'm doing that and I hope to be doing that for a long time. I'm looking forward to having one junk meal once I get to my goal but I'm not going back to my old weighs (ways)
This year nothing really major has happened and that's how I like it, hard to improve on perfection I guess

Well...we are soon to have a major and wonderfuol change and that is the addition of our 2 children (ages 3 and 18 months) as soon as they can come home from Haiti. I am so glad that I started to eat healthy and exercise BEFORE they come home because I cannot imagine trying to start something like this after they are home. I do worry about continuing once they come home and am trying to figure out how I will do that.

Peace,
Paula

OMG, Holly!v I grew up in Sonoma and my mom lives in Kenwood. My sister lived in Santa Rosa for years (my oldest niece was born there), and my uncle and his life partner still live there. I like Santa Rosa - big enough to have stuff to do, but not so big that it feels like a huge city. I'm a wee bit jealous of you, I think!

thanks jenelle! =) david grew up there, has friends and family there, and i don't really have an attachement to anywhere, so i siad we could move there. i hope i like it! we could live in any of the surrounding towns, wherever we find a cheap place.

I moved out of my parents house for good about 4 years ago. I lost 15# right away.

Doing my own grocery shopping, meal planning & cooking made a HUGE difference. I had a friend help me shop, and she bought stuff that she would eat, but not that would be good for either of us. Bah. So that was something to overcome, and every time she visits me, she would rather eat fattening things than have me cook healthy. But she's here less than 6 times a year, so no big.

I think to date, the death of my maternal grandparents within a week of each other last August would be one of the biggest life changes for me. My parents divorced when I was 16, but somehow that just made sense. We needed to do that. And when that happened, my grandparents were there to make sure mom was able to see to it that we had all we needed.

My grandma always harped on me about my weight. I hated that about her, I resented that she felt the need to say something every time I saw her. I always thought that I was trying to lose weight. Eating lean cuisnies or smart ones or walking a bunch, or swimming. I'd do that for a month or so, and then get bored, not see results and quit. I have always been happy with who I am, and figured that if people couldn't see me in spite of my weight, then I didn't need them in my life.

Sometime between Thanksgiving and New Years, with our faily gatherings without grandma and grandpa, I realized that I had to do something. I needed to take control of my life and get to a healthy weight--for me.

Daners - must be a grandma thing...mine also harped on me constantly about my weight, even though she was about 150 lbs. overweight herself. Still miss her, though...

Something my Grammy said to me is what inspired my screenname.

My biggest change that prompted weight gain to the point I had begun to hate myself was the move three years ago from a place I had many friends and family to Arizona where I knew noone. I was miserable, and since we moved in July (when it's hotter than h---) I didn't meet anyone until much later. I gained a lot of weight.
Actually, now that I think about it, I am beginning some of those same habits as I prepare for another big change. In July, I start student teaching. It will be the first time in three years that I haven't been with my boys all day, or there to drop off/pick up from school. I think that this will be even harder than when I was working full time when the boys were just babies. I am taking my final class (OK, I still have one more left, but that is an independent study class so just me and the teacher and only for four weeks) and working on my senior thesis, which is taking up pretty much all of my time. I am very nervous about the changes that will be taking place for myself and my family.