Sheryl's Weight Loss Journey

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The story of my ongoing journey of weight loss and changing my relationship with food and weight forever.

A lifelong struggle with food and weight issues makes me well aquainted with weight loss programs, herbal supplements, liquid diets - you name it, I have tried it. The worst was a medically supervised liquid diet which not only made me lose muscle mass but when the inevitable regain occurred I was devastated and in a terrible emotional state - the cycle of deprivation and binge to the extreme.

In more recent years, I decided to not focus on "dieting" but instead made some changes in my life to support my own happiness, family life and my inner life. I lost about 50 pounds just doing that, but got kind of stuck when old habits started creeping in and I regained about 20 or so of those pounds. Being a slow learner, I decided that I needed to take care of this once and for all and I decided to pursue gastric surgery. Thank goodness a dear friend shared a pearl of wisdom that made me reconsider

"That is a drastic step. It seems to me that there are a lot of pretty drastic changes you could make in your life before risking your health and even your life"

So, I have taken some drastic steps; I asked for a work schedule change, I asked for the support of my children, family and friends, I took the development of my inner life a step further and I chose a sensible program to help guide me. And then I made a committment to myself to really do it for 12 weeks before deciding to go under the knife. I chose Weight Watchers since there program is inexpensive, flexible, is not guilt based and at least at my weight, you get plenty to eat. I have not doubted since day one that this has been the right decision for me... I am a student of eating reasonably, learning portion control, learning to put food in it's correct perspective in my life. At the same time, I am working on the emotional aspects of eating problem since I don't believe I can be successful without both.

My Weight Watchers weight range is 120-144. I would love to weigh about 140 pounds, but at this point, I am very focused on smaller, more attainable goals. I am dreaming of being under 200# by the end of the year, but I don't spend much energy on that - shorter term goals are much better for me.

My first "mini" goal was losing 10% of my starting weight which was a powerful image for me. Getting down to 245 is meaningful for me because I maintained that weight for some time and it has a strong symbolic meaning as a crossroad of sorts.

Now that I have lost that first 10%, I decided to make my next goal to lose another 25 pounds. It is another 10% off and when I get there it will bring me to over 50 pounds total lost which will really make a difference in how I look and feel. For me, something I can achieve in a few months time is a good time frame because it is big enough to be meaningful but still seems within reach.