There I was, cruising along with my daily food deliveries. Eating, enjoying my food, losing weight, and never doing something as mundane as counting a calorie, or adding points, or anything else. Loving my freedom from the grocery store, because I didn’t have to push any carts up and down any aisles searching for something the store moved just to keep me on my toes. I was loving life. Then Denny and I went on the European river cruise, which was fantastic. I didn’t stick to any diet while we were in Europe because I was enjoying myself and wanted to experience the foods presented. Allowing myself a little leeway on the cruise was essential for really adjusting to my new lifestyle.
I was actually pretty pleased upon my return from our vacation to only have gained a couple of pounds, rather than the 5-10 pounds that I anticipated. I slid right back into the routine of having my meals out of my little black bag. Then my body decided to rebel. Bodies are not genetically designed to lose weight, but to maintain or gain instead. I wish someone would develop a way that we could give them the memo – imminent starvation is not really a factor, so it’s OK to let the weight go. So, after the success of losing 75 pounds, it was not out of the ordinary for me to reach a point where my weight loss plateaued. I expected it to happen, and was ready to wait it out.
Let’s just say that sometimes life has other plans. While I was prepared to wait out the plateau, confident that I would start losing again, there were a few outside factors which were coming into play. Denny retired from the US Coast Guard after a twenty year career, and took a little time in hopping on the job hunt. He did actually get an offer of an offer working for APM Terminals, but they started a reorganization which required a hiring freeze so that even though they wanted to hire him, they couldn’t. We were trying to wait for this job to come through as it is the perfect job for him, but then, as everyone knows, the economy went into the tank. He did get a job, but it was making significantly less than what we had anticipated, so we cut back the ChefsDiet to maintenance level.
Apparently my maintenance level is 7 days a week and no less, as I not only didn’t maintain, but started to gain. You might think it was due to what I was eating on the days that I didn’t receive my little black bag on my front porch, and yes, on some days that might be true. But, overall, I was striving to replicate the meals I had with ChefsDiet so I could maintain the same program which had worked so well. I failed. I was eating salads most days for lunch, just as I was with ChefsDiet, but I had difficulty in coming up with the snacks for myself. My eating got off schedule, and I couldn’t seem to get it back on track. More pounds kept finding me. I was clinging to my deliveries of ChefsDiet, but it was becoming less and less financially feasible.
By December 2008, I had put enough weight back on that I was beginning to notice a definite difference in the level of my health. My knees were beginning to hurt again, my back was continually sore, my complexion was starting to get muddy once again, and I was having more difficulty breathing. Before things got too out of control, I decided my doctor and I needed to have another chat and that this time we would discuss the surgery option. I was tired of diets, couldn’t afford the one thing that so far had worked beautifully, as long as I didn’t have to do it, and I was tired of trying options that failed. Late 2005, I started my journey toward health and did it with the mindset that I was changing my lifestyle and it didn’t matter whether it was a quick fix or not, so it was on to the next stop in the process.
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LK Gardner-Griffie
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