So, like most humans, I love pizza! And when I saw a recipe for a Weight Watchers pizza crust with Greek yogurt and self-rising flour, I was skeptical, but now I’m a believer!

Since I’ve discovered this pizza dough recipe, I’ve made 2 kinds of pizza: Pepperoni and Buffalo Chicken, and my, my they were delicious. Who said you can’t have your pizza and eat it too?!

 

Plain and simple…Weight Watcher’s works.  It gives me all of the flexibility that I need and I can stay on target.  Although I really do enjoy Keto, I was having a hard time eating all of the required fat intake and it was causing an upset tummy.  I did not experience that before, but my weight and health have changed since then.

Speaking of health, I have a confession…I had my first honestly scary doctor’s appointment at the beginning of this year.  I have very minor high blood pressure that was causing severe dizzy spells and headaches.  I then started a blood pressure medicine that made me sleep all of the time.  I don’t want to live my life this way.  And then my last doctor’s appointment in early March, I got on the scale and reached the highest weight I have ever been.  The doctor’s scale said 305.  I said impossible, my home scale has never been above 298.  Who was I kidding…that somehow it wasn’t real if my scale never went over 300.  No, I was just adding to the long list of excuses.  The very next morning I got on my own scale, determined to prove the doctor wrong of my 300+ weight to sadly discover that my trusty scale revealed the truth…I was over 300 pounds.

Weight is just a number, so I am not saying that you should be a slave to the scale, but I’m tired of this overweight life.  My blood pressure is high, my knees ache, I have chronic plantar fasciitis, my low back hurts, and those are just the physical parts.  What about all of the other parts like I want to fit into normal clothes, I don’t want to hide from pictures, I want a life that I can live.  And I haven’t been living.

I made the choice to start over.  I started with a quick 3 day cleanse, then keto until I decided that Weight Watchers (where I have always had the most success) is where I needed to return too.  I’m down almost 13 pounds according to my scale and I am motivated.

I hope that you will continue to be patient with me on this journey because that is what this is.  I need help staying motivated on the days I don’t want too.  How can we do this together?  Time, this will take time.  As they say, the slower you lose it, the longer you can keep it off because you are changing your lifestyle and the way you think about food.  I am committed to no longer being a slave to food, are you?!

 

 

Hi, my name is Jessica.  I am 32 years old and I have struggled with my weight since I was 10 years old!  For some of you, you may know what that story feels like.  For others, it may be a more recent struggle.  No matter how or when your struggle started, I understand your pain and disappointment when you have tried every “diet” under the sun.  I can remember my mom putting her and myself on a “diet” when I was 10.  We did the cabbage soup diet, we did the we are going to starve ourselves for a few days diet only to then binge eat diet and even tried diet pills together.

I remember in high school that I wasn’t super large, but I weighed more than everyone else.  I had some success with Weight Watchers the summer before my senior year of high school and I felt great, until sometime in college when I fell off the bandwagon.  That led into years of yo-yo dieting through my twenties.  I did the HCG diet and lost a good amount of weight only to gain double back.  Yo-yo dieting, mixed with stress and depression help get me to where I am now.  And for a long time, I think I sort of just gave up and just wanted to accept that this is who I am and I am never going to lose weight no matter how hard I try.

BUT, I didn’t really want to accept that and knew that in the bottom of my heart, that was just an excuse.  Last year, I felt compelled to start a new journey through blogging to help hold me accountable, but more importantly, help others learn to love themselves.  I did and I started off doing pretty good.  I started incorporating healthier choices that were livable and I was feeling great that I did the hardest part, which was to take the first step.  I had the blog up and running for just about a month, and then…

Last spring, I started the keto diet and was excited that I was able to stick to it longer than three to four days.  I was feeling good about myself.  I was into week three when my world as I knew it, fell apart.  I had worked for an organization that I had poured my heart and soul into for almost eleven years, but this place that was such an immense part of me had become a toxic environment that I didn’t even recognize it anymore.  Ultimately, I had to make the decision that I had in my mind been trying to make for years and that was to leave.  In June 2018, I packed my car to the brim and moved from East Tennessee to Charleston, South Carolina.  I took a job at another organization that has brought me new friends and an upbeat and positive atmosphere, which is what was lacking in my world before.

It has taken this long to heal, and I’m not completely there yet, but Charleston has soothed my soul in so many ways.  I’m rediscovering who I am, my purpose and what I want out of life.  For months, healing has looked like beach trips, wine, discovering things in my new city and eating a lot of unhealthy food.  I made the decision when I went back home for Christmas that the blog had to be relaunched because I felt like I finally knew the direction I wanted my life to go and I was ready to make goals and reach them.

I started the year off at my heaviest weight ever, 298 pounds.  I have in mind my goal weight, but I’m not focusing on that as much as I am making small goals.  The first goal is to lose 10% of what I weight now, so rounding up = 30 pounds.  Let’s do this together!