30 DOWN

I've spent the better part of the last year engaged in a love/hate relationship with food. Essentially, I love food, and a lot of it hates me. When I was first diagnosed with GERD a couple of years ago, I was told to avoid tomatoes, coffee, and alcohol. I found, however, that these foods weren't problematic for me. In fact, the only food that I had credible evidence of being "bad for me" was heavy pastry, and only before 11 a.m. One of the worst attacks I'd had up until this year was on our second day in Paris when I had a wonderful, lovely croissant before going to the Louvre. The next day I had pastry again and the same thing happened. Since then I've avoided early morning sweets, but night time sweets have been fine.

Until this year. For a long time there it seemed like no matter what I ate I was having terrible GERD and I become incredibly despondent about it all. In June I realized that in addition to food being a major source of food, it was also a major source of my ever-increasing waist line (and ass, and thighs, and every other expandable part of my body).

Looking at pictures of me from our trip to Hawaii at the beginning of March, I kind of don't recognize myself. I mean, those are my eyes, but that's a really fat girl looking back at me. I was growing out of most of my clothes. My fat pants were tight.




A month before that trip someone mistook me for a woman whose picture I was able to find on the Internet. The person they thought I was is kind of enormous. I was appalled, but it wasn't enough of a wake up call for me. It was unfortunate, to be sure, but I'm lazy and I hate diets. So I continued to be fat and unhealthy.

In June I started Weight Watchers, and I thought that in addition to my weight problem it might also help my GERD problem. Unfortunately, I wasn't losing weight all that fast, my GERD continued to be incredibly problematic, and I was miserable. I was ALWAYS hungry. Going to the grocery store was a major pain in the ass because I had to figure out the point value of every damn thing I wanted to put in my cart. I know WW works for a lot of people but I am, apparently, not one of them.

In mid-July, at the urging of my friend and my sister, we started a modified version of the Paleo diet. Immediately both Alan and I started losing weight. I had more energy. My GERD lessened. Since then with the exception of December we've pretty much stuck with this new lifestyle and there's been a marked improvement in our weight. Yesterday I stepped on the scale and I was down 29 pounds from the day I started Weight Watchers (on which I only lost four pounds). Clothes that I haven't been able to wear since 2008 fit me again. My skinny jeans were baggy jeans yesterday. I look in the mirror and I know I look better and that makes me feel better.





I still have struggles with GERD (example: pretty much all of New Orleans) and I don't know that I'll ever get rid of that particular albatross, but I'm slowly getting rid of my fat and that makes me healthier overall. I have another ten pounds to lose before I hit my first major goal weight, and it's so close I can taste it. I won't hit it by the time we go to Maui (which was my original goal) but I'm not going to beat myself up over it either because hello ... I'VE LOST 30 POUNDS.

And I have to admit, it feels great when I see people I haven't seen in awhile and they tell me how awesome I look. :-) It might even feel better than a slice of cake tastes. Maybe.