As a youngster I was always skinny. I was known as skinny mini, string bean, twiggy, among many other names kids came up with in those days. Back then, I didn’t like it one bit - if only I had known! As I got older I filled out but never, ever had a problem with weight. I was able to eat anything I wanted without having to worry about weight gain. I eventually married. Once married I still had no weight problems. I was quite pleased with the way I looked and thought I would look that way forever.

In due course, my husband and I had two children. With our first child I gained 25 pounds but it immediately came off after birth. This was not the case with my second child. With the second child I gained nearly sixty pounds, and to my astoni

On the next visit to the doctor I learned that I did not have any debilitating disease that prevented me from losing weight. The doctor also told me to relax and slow down. He told me the best way to lose weight is to eat right and exercise. I told him I thought I had been doing that all along. He informed me that dieting; especially some of the dieting I was doing, was not necessarily eating right.

I decided to do some research on weight loss and dieting. I learned that all a person needs to do is exercise for 30 minutes a day. I learned that eating right consisted of eating vegetable, fruits, and all the five food groups. I learned that you could eat just about anything healthy, as long as you ate in moderation and watched the fat content.

My perception on the things I needed to do to lose weight did not reflect reality. The problems I had trying to lose weight made this apparent to me. I had thought for a number of years that exercise would keep you in shape no matter what you ate. When that didn’t work, I figured starving myself in addition to the exercise would be the key to weight loss for me. In reality, I was only hurting myself by over exercising and fasting. The extreme exercise resulted in multiple surgeries on my knees and shoulders. I did not realize that eating less actually makes it difficult to lose weight. I also did not realize that it takes time to lose weight and it does not happen over night.

I did everything I could to loss weight. At first I went with an exercise battle plan. I worked out so much at times, that I caused myself un

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