So here I am. I have decided to take a step towards the final frontier of my personal happiness. My health.

I have been through a hell of a ride on my journey to today. I have struggled through a dysfunctional marriage to an abusive alcoholic, stood witness to the attack on New York City first hand, narrowly escaped death from sepsis blood poisoning, fought a ten year fertility battle, and buried a friend/lover taken far too young from brain cancer.

Life as a human being is hard enough, no wonder I was unable to keep my weight under control – there was too much else to focus on.

Today, I am the proud mother of a beautiful two year old boy, I am fulfilled in my 10+ year career with a fantastic company who value my efforts, I own my own home, have a functional car, and am in a relationship with a man whom I have known almost all my life in some capacity… its new… its fresh, but its good. He is kind, and patient and wonderful with my son.

The song Good Mother by Jan Arden goes through my head on a daily basis these days – if you don’t know it, check it out on YouTube. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to truly believe that I am finally happy and at peace. There is only one concern left… and that is my weight and my health.

I have tried over the years to lose weight and on a couple of occasions have been somewhat successful, most notably loosing 70ish lbs in 2001 on the Dr. Bernstein Diet. But, being predisposed to easily gain, it keeps coming back.

Last year I topped my scales (having left my husband 3x in the same year my child was born) at 296! I knew I had to do something and quick.

I started an exercise regiment and eating well, and managed to lose 26 lbs in about 4 months. 270 felt pretty good and I started to gain back some confidence in myself and hope for my future.

Then suddenly, my guy (who was not my guy at the time) broke up with his girlfriend and landed on my couch!! We were not an item but decided to try and live as roommates until he either found something more permanent or the arrangement was too awkward.

Riiiiiiiight. That clearly didn’t and wasn’t going to work. He came with a WHOLE lot of baggage and there were some serious growing pains – the to point where I threw him out of my house in January. That’s what we needed I guess to determine that our friendship (and the stuff that blossomed along with it) was in fact a love neither of us were looking for. But, all that confusion and activity made me put my weight loss on the back burner, yet again.

So here I go again, at the start of this year, new diet, new exercise regiment –this is going to be it! I rejoined Weight Watchers (probably for the 18-20^th time) and bought myself a treadmill.

Starting the year off at 278 I went gang busters being perfectly well behaved with my eating and working out on my treadmill approx 5 times a week at 40 minutes a pop. I was on the move again and dropped to 265.

Then suddenly I started suffering from sciatica. So, thinking that the exercise would sort it out, I pushed harder – increasing my efforts to every day and included some workouts on my vibration platform. By the end of February I could no longer sleep or stand for long periods of time without pain.

Turns out I have something called Piriformis Syndrome. Apparently what is happening is a muscle that attaches somewhere in my butt and hip is clenching up when I exercise and pinching my sciatic nerve. Are you KIDDING ME?

So through acupuncture, deep massage therapy and chiropractic, they are still trying to make the muscle ease up… and I have not been able to work out.

I continued my diet plan for a while but then threw my hands in the air out of frustration and so here I am - and back up to 277.8. So much effort to lose it, so easily regained.

What I do I know is that I have the will and determination to make this work… all I need is the rewarding results for my efforts. One thing that my fella said to me shortly after we started to cohabitate was, "I dont understand with all that you do, and how you eat, how you weight more than 98 pounds!"

That sort of outside review is the justification I needed! :wub:

This is a big step... and a bit scary... but I am worth this effort, and there is simply put, nothing I wouldn't do for my boy. He deserves a healthy mommy who will be with him a long long time.

Let’s do this thing.

May 10, 2013. Dr. Rodrigues at Star Medica in Juarez.

I’m ready.