Setting sail

I'm a 32 year old woman and as of today, June 8th, 2010, I weigh 213 pounds with a BMI of 36.6. I have been obese for as long as I can remember, and most people in my family struggle with obesity. I'm otherwise healthy, quite active, about to start on a new exciting career having just finished graduate school and ready to practice as a family nurse practitioner.

Four years ago during a life transition I woke up to the reality of my weight at that time. I then weighed 275 pounds and had a BMI of 47.2 which qualifies as morbidly obese. In the next two years I lost over 80 pounds through educating myself about nutrition, logging all my calories, and being consistent with exercise including beginning to run. Recently increasing busy-ness, some depression, and an injury that has limited my running have contributed to my weight creeping back up to the current point.

While I've spent most of my life in denial of the seriousness of my obesity until my successful weight loss, I now have a new motivation for achieving a healthy weight. My husband and I are eager to have a baby. While there are plenty of people who become pregnant while obese and have healthy pregnancies and babies, being obese significantly increases the risk for serious health issues including gestational diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, preeclampsia, premature birth, large for gestational age infants and other concerns. Not only would I like to improve my own health by losing weight, I'd also really like to avoid these issues and give our baby the healthiest start possible.

What's really lit a fire under me is a NYT story I saw recently (here) about rising obesity rates in pregnancy and the impacts on maternity wards. Pretty grim. Plus I'm not getting any younger, and pregnancy at "advanced maternal age" (over 35) has its own set of risks.

Then there's also this great reason for losing weight: I spend large amounts of time counseling my patients to lose weight, and I'm really not a big fan of hypocrisy.

So here's the deal... starting today I'm going to have the goal of safely losing as much weight as possible in one year so that we can start trying to conceive next summer. Minimally, I want to get my BMI below the 35 mark (about 203 for me). My true goal is to reach the point of just being overweight, not obese, which would be a BMI of less than 30, or a weight of less than 175. That's about 40 pounds in one year, or just shy of a pound a week - a nice healthy rate of weight loss.

Ideally I'd get to a "normal" weight which they say would be 145 pounds for me. I was probably a little kid the last time I weighed 145 pounds :-). This would be great but is a bit of a daunting step right now... so for now lets focus on baby steps (so to speak!).

So here we go! I keep telling myself that I know how to do this, I've done it before, and I am smart, capable, effective and successful - I can do this! I'm starting this blog to help hold myself accountable and to share my journey with others who might be on a similar path.