Some background

Thought I'd give you some background on my diet history over the years to give some context to this effort.

Short story is that I just never outgrew my baby fat! But those rolls of fat on the thighs do not look quite so cute once you are out of diapers. Okay, okay, it is not quite that bad, but the truth is that I have struggled with weight my whole life.

I was a chunky kid. Not real fat, but chunky. I slimmed down in my teens, but was always 'fluffy' or 'doughy' or, as my brother used to say, 'like a marshmallow'. I gained 20 pounds or so the year I was an exchange student in Australia (whole milk with cream to blame), lost it, and gained it back my freshman year of college. Lost it with the Scarsdale diet between my freshman and sophomore years.

I maintained my weight pretty well through the rest of college, wedding, and the couple of years before my first pregnancy at age 24. I lost most, but not all, of the pregnancy weight during the 11 months of nursing my daughter, but got pregnant again before the weight was all gone. While nursing my son, I was in a diet group at church called "Diet, Discipline, and Discipleship" (based on the American Diabetic Diet). Lost much, but not all of the weight before we moved.

We moved a lot during my twenties, and it seemed that each time we moved, I would immediately gain 10 - 20 pounds. Probably from the disruption in schedule and new foods to try at new places. When the kids were pre-schoolers, I went to Weight Watchers. My weight at my first weigh in was about 35 pounds above my 'baseline' college age weight, and I was turning 30. I lost maybe 15 pounds on Weight Watchers before we moved to Sitka, Alaska.

I don't remember being on any particular structured diets in Sitka (although there were many attempts at dieting on my own), and by the time we moved again 4 1/2 years later I was up to 50 pounds above my college weight. I was 35.