Day One

Well, hello there. I feel that I should introduce myself to those who might be reading this lovely little blog I've started, but I do not want to put myself in a position where I will lose my job. Thus, you can call me Weazer6. I will tell you that I am a thirty-something journalism teacher somewhere in the Midwest. My interests include singing karaoke a few times a year, reading great and not-so-great books, keeping up with celebrity gossip (to keep hip for my students, of course), starting craft and crochet projects that I know I will probably never complete, and feeding a distant dream to be a New York Times best-selling author.

I'm not very good at the whole keep-a-journal thing. Heck, I should really face it - I'm not good at this whole losing weight thing either. Truth be told, I'm not really sure what I'm good at except singing these days, and I doubt myself on that one, too. Routines are very difficult for me to follow. Whether it's laziness or an inability to stick to a schedule, I cannot say. I can say, though, that I have tried many times in the past to do the whole schedule/lose weight/keep a clean house thing. Inevitably, I lose the battle to be a better person.

In part because I'm tired of looking this way, which is to say, very fat and unrecognizable to myself, I am going to take some baby steps to get me out of this horrible hole I've dug for myself and jumped in, time and time again. Having a routine would definitely help with that. But...

It's currently almost a quarter after 11 on Sunday night. I have two days to teach this week, and then I fly to Charlotte, NC, for a conference on career and tech. education. While I'm quite excited to leave school for a few days so soon after Thanksgiving break, I'm a bit nervous about flying. I can't remember what airline we'll be taking. I love flying, truly I do. The last few years, however, since I have gained a HUGE portion of the weight I carry, it's more and more uncomfortable to squeeze into the tiny little seats. I do hope I sit next to my friends and not a stranger who will tell awful stories about me after we land.

Once we get there, I have to think about food. Well, I think about food all the time. I think about food even when I'm eating food. I know that I don't care about the physical act of eating; I care about the 30 seconds of comfort eating gives me. It's sick. It's beyond sick. I am a highly educated woman who knows the ins and outs of nutrition and weight loss. I've done Weight Watchers 3 times. I've belonged to at least 3 different gyms. I have free access to a fully loaded weight and cardio room at school. What I need to do in Charlotte is think about eating healthful meals.

Someone, and I don't remember who, told me sometime in the past week about a woman who lost a large amount of weight by changing her diet. She cut out foods that weren't in their natural state. For example, she could eat hamburger because, although not in its physical natural state, nothing had been added to it after the initial butchering. She could, however, eat bread. She could eat rice and potatoes, but not if they had been prepared and packaged in boxes. It seems like a rather interesting concept that I'd like to try. My dream is to eat from the outside aisles of the grocery store, where most non-processed food is found. I dream of a diet like that.

If anyone actually reads this, what do you all think? Does this modified, natural-state diet sound reasonable? I'm curious to see what the public thinks.