Natalie's Adventures in Wonderland

Natalie's adventures in Wonderland


The big news is that I am down just over 20 pounds in the last 7 weeks!  It's been pretty easy following the Medifast diet.  Obviously I've been too busy to plan meals and do a lot of cooking, weighing and measuring, and frankly, that's where I get into a lot of trouble.  I mean when you are hungry and trying to prepare a meal, it's almost impossible to avoid nibbling.  On the Medifast diet, you eat 6 times a day and 5 of those meals are already prepackaged, portion controlled meals that are scientifically formulated to have all the nutrients you need to maintain a busy active lifestyle.  There's very little preparation involved, and the 6th meal is very simple too.  Just lean protein and lots of green vegetables. 

I think that if I can follow this diet under the challenging circumstances I'm facing, just about anyone can follow it.  I started the diet on the first day we arrived in rural Missouri.  The home we purchased for cash, because I hate banks and didn't want to pay rent or have a mortgage, was not in very good shape.  We knew it would need work, and, not surprisingly, it needed much more work than we expected.  We stayed at my brother-in-law Bill's home on an off for almost two weeks while we dealt with removing trash, fixing plumbing, renovating the bathroom, fixing the septic and other challenging home improvement issues.  We also gutted two walls down to the studs and are completely renovating a room for our office, and a storage area.  We plan to do all the siding like what is shown in the second picture and we think when we are done it will be very nice, but it won't be completed until sometime next year.  It's good enough to live in now though, and the location is beautiful. 

We are up on a hill with a beautiful view of the bottom land where the Missouri River used to flow before it changed course.(The top picture is less than half way up the hill and just to the right of our house)  We have wonderful neighbors, like the Burgess's, who bring us the occasional over sized fresh cantaloupe or helped us save our propane tank when moles destabilized the ground it was sitting on and it went rolling down onto our front porch.  Gary used his over sized bobcat and pulled it up the hill and moved it down to the front yard for us. (It seems like everything is over sized here!)  We are also surrounded by tons of history that will be fun to research. 

Now that we are settled in, and I have started my new school bus job, I expect to begin to exercise more so I can continue this great progress on my weight loss journey.  Climbing the hill behind my house a couple of times a day will be just one easy way to do that.  Next time I check in, I expect to post some pictures that will show noticeable results from my weight loss efforts. 

A New Beginning

It's not even day one yet on my new weight-loss journey.  I'm expecting that to be Monday, July 1, 2013.  This is my before picture.  I want to lose at least 100 lbs.  Yes, I am carrying that much extra weight.  I think I wear it pretty well.  So, by way of prologue, or introduction, or forward... whatever... here is the story of my past:

Like most dieters, I have had my ups and downs on the scale for most of my life.  Here's me as a pudgy little toddling cutie pie:

I've always had a big appetite.  Fortunately I've always been active as well. I was awarded the "Best All Around Camper"  award at camp Algonquin when I was 12.  I'd like to think it was because I was an excellent swimmer, canoer, archer, rower, and flag capturer, as well as female tether ball champion, and not, as one sarcastic person suggested, because I was all round.  I owe my athletic prowess in summer camp to many years of intense dancing lessons that included tap, jazz and ballet.  I was pretty good at that as well. 

I went on my first diet when I was about 8 years old.  It was a low carbohydrate diet.  It was the first time those kinds of diets became popular.  The doctor recommended it.  I did pretty well at it.  I got a pretty dress when I reached my goal.

I gained weight again after that and started another diet when I was 13.  I did pretty well with that.  Went down from a size 16 to a size 12 as I recall.  If only I had just stuck with that.  About a year later I started getting depressed.  Food was the answer.  I ballooned up to a size 20.  Maybe you are beginning to see a trend here?

Let's skip a couple of oscillations and get right to the climax of my weight story:  The child bearing years.  So my first son was born on July 4, 1990.  I did pretty good while I was pregnant, gaining only 25 pounds.  Problem was, I was heavy to start with, back at that size 20.  Now I needed to struggle to get back into the size 20.  About four months later, however, I got pregnant again and this time it was twins.  I gained about 45 pounds.  Delivering two babies by C section resulted in about 2 pounds of weight loss.  How does that work?  I had great intentions to take the weight off, but it turns out that rearing children makes that difficult.  With 3 children in diapers it was years before I had time to think about myself.

This all has taught me some things that I think will help me with my newest weight loss effort.  First, weight loss takes time.  I don't mean that it might take a year or more to lose the weight.  I mean you need time in your day to plan meals and activities.  You also need time to prepare the meals, and participate in activities.  Then you need time to eat the meal and recover from the activities.  Last of all there is cleaning up from meals and activities.  That's a lot of time.  I'm thinking maybe that could be a mini project during this weight loss effort.  How much time does it take to prepare, execute and recover from weight loss efforts?  It definitely deserves study. I could get scientific about it; do some research, and experiment and record findings. 

Fortunately, it looks like this summer I'm going to have some time.  I'm not just changing my diet and exercise habits, I'm making a huge life change.  I'm moving half way across the country from a city to a rural town.  I'm going to be a home owner and on the 1/3 acre I've purchased there will be a garden and chickens!  It could turn out to be a twisted cross between Green Acres and The Simple Life.  It should be exciting.  I know, I know, some of you are saying uh, oh....  That's ok.  At least it should make for good reading. 

The move is in two days.  We pick up the truck tomorrow, load tomorrow and Friday, and shove off sometime Friday afternoon.  God willing, we will arrive sometime Sunday evening.  Just in time to start my diet on Monday.  I will have to find a library to log into the blog, because as yet there is no internet service available in my little community of just under 300 people.  Dish network said to check back with them next week on that. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.