Introducing myself
A little weight bio: I'm about partway through to my weight loss goal -- so far, I've gone from a size 24 in pants to a size 14, am hoping to reach a size 12 by the end of the month. I slowly put on weight throughout my twenties, when I was very sedentary and given to overeating. I was also in a state of denial, saying, well, it's not so bad, until one day, I realized that I was actually fat, but I felt powerless to do anything about it.
While I was in grad school, I was unhappy and put on even more weight. Eventually I made the decision to leave my program, even though the whole process was overwhelmingly scary at the time. This summer, a year after I left my first program, I started a Masters of Education program at a university in my hometown. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that during that year in between, I realized that I was very slowly losing weight without consciously trying to do so -- dropping a pants size once every three months --and so I added exercise to the mix, and have now been dropping a pants size every month or month and a half.
At first, before my program started in late May, I walked the trails for several hours a day, gradually working up until walking ten miles was easy for me. Then my academic program started and I didn't have as much time, so I bought a bike and started riding the nine miles to campus and back -- an 18-mile round trip. Especially with the hills, this was very difficult for me at first, so I did the commute three times a week, and would walk for an hour and a half on off days. Now, I am aiming to ride as many days in a week as I can, for four weeks, before school starts up again. I hope to lose the vestige of upper stomach fat still clinging on by that time. Oddly, once I started biking, my weight stagnated for a month and yet I've continued losing inches. I think I may finally be losing pounds again. I can ride up hills that I couldn't tackle before, so I'm sure I've put on muscle.
I've had an interest in whole foods and healthy eating for some years now. Guess it took a while for the "eat less" advice to catch on... That said, I do consume less meat and sugar than I did last year. I greatly enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables, farmers markets and the like, cooking, and discovering new foods and getting creative with it. I have discovered the joys of mung beans...
I've been trying to find useful sites for people in the process of losing weight, but have mostly just found sites aimed at those who want to lose weight but haven't started yet. Thence, here.
Also, my target weight may seem high, but I'm very tall and have a large frame! We're talking wide hips, 7-inch wrist and size 11 shoes here.
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