Hi Cebelle! I also had my gall bladder removed (about a year ago) and rediscovered the "joy" of eating fatty foods. My weight loss has been slow since (as in, about 30 lbs during the entire year).
I've been hanging around the Maintainers and LWL forums for a while, posting off and on (more "off" than "on"), but the only intro I ever posted was in a weekly thread back in May (I think). So here's my introduction:
I'm 27 years old, single, and working as a technical writer. I was always "solid" as a child, but quite athletic, up until high school. I gradually got chubbier in high school, maintained (for the most part) through my undergrad college years, then shot up 10-15 lbs/year as a grad student. I ended up leaving my school (for many reasons) without completing my doctorate in environmental engineering.
I always recognized that I was overweight, but I fooled myself into thinking it wasn't that bad - mainly because I didn't want to change my habits. I occasionally played with the idea of dieting and exercise, but I never really did it.
Then, mid-July 2003 (I don't know the exact date, but I might be able to track it down), something clicked. I was looking at physical requirements for joining the Army because my brother was considering it, and I thought I might be interested as well. I was a little taken aback by how much weight I'd have to lose before the Army would even accept me. Suddenly I had a goal - to get fit enough that, if I wanted to join the Army, I could. I started running (jogging and walking, really), joined Curves, and cut back on what I was eating.
I'm not sure that I truly thought I could do it, but I wanted to do something with the motivation while I had it. When I saw that it was actually working - I lost about 7 lbs in the first two weeks - I was confident that I really could lose weight. I added weightlifting somewhere along the way, and it was at that point that I started to look a lot better.
Since I started, there have been a few bumps in the road. During the Fall of 2003, I started having severe abdominal pain, and after a few trips to the ER, they finally discovered it was gallstones. As I mentioned above, I had my gall bladder removed - on Christmas Eve. Other than that, the only problem has been consistency; some weeks/months I'm "into" fitness and eating healthy, but some I'm not. I'm still not at goal, but (like Ilene says
) I consider myself a maintainer in training.
I'm a chronic lurker, so if you don't "see" me much, I'm still probably here. I'll try to contribute occasionally, though, since I've gotten so much from reading what y'all have written.
I'm going to paste this in the LWL intro thread as well. See ya around!