As far as weight goes, I’ve been up and down over the years (like many of you, I’m sure) and I’ve tried plenty of different diet and exercise plans with varying degrees of success. I’ve done Atkins, The Zone, Weight Watchers, the Fat Flush Plan, the Suzanne Somers diet and more. I’ve probably had the most consistent success with Weight Watchers, but I’ve learned a little something from all of the plans, which is something I’ll talk about in more detail later on.

Getting pregnant changed everything for me. I gained a whopping 60 pounds during my first pregnancy, which I didn‘t expect. I lost 30 of it within 6 weeks, when I went for my follow-up doctor visit, but the other 30 stuck like glue. I started working out and trying to eat healthy, but my weight didn’t change (although I did tone up and feel better). When my daughter was 11 months old, I found out I was expecting for the second time - surprise! I was happy, but I worried about being pregnant again before getting the extra weight off. During my second pregnancy, I was more careful about how much I ate and I continued to exercise for the first few months. I ended up gaining just over 20 pounds and it all came off after six weeks. I was relieved, but still had the other 30 to contend with.

Then I had a wake-up call. A few months after my second daughter was born, I came down with an ear infection and went to the doctor. When they weighed me, I found out I had gained 15 pounds in really short period of time - a matter of a couple months. I had no idea that I had gained more weight. My clothes weren’t fitting differently and I wasn’t aware of any big changes to my eating habits. But, the alarm bells definitely went off. I knew if I didn’t really do something to get the weight off, it was clearly going to keep creeping up on me. At that point, I joined Weight Watchers once again.

Having an extra 15 pounds to lose on top of the 30 seemed like a huge feat, but I did end up losing almost 25 pounds on Weight Watchers. Then, I stopped doing it. I’m not sure why I stopped right when it was really working for me, but soon after I ended up going through one of those rough “desert” periods in life where things like losing weight go on the backburner. During this period, my husband’s mother unexpectedly went into a coma for six months and ended up passing away at 52, my grandfather died less than two weeks later, we moved to a different house and my youngest daughter was diagnosed with a rare genetic syndrome called Cornelia de Lange. I don’t fault myself for not focusing on my weight during this time – it was enough to get by from day to day – but I do know that I’ve likely gained back all or most of what I lost. I haven’t weighed myself in a long time, so I‘m not sure where I stand.

Thankfully, life has bounced back and I’m ready to get serious about my weight loss again. After going back and forth on what to do, I’ve decided to try Weight Watchers because it worked for me before. I have a work trip I’m taking at the end of this month and it would definitely be a nice confidence-booster to lose a little weight before going. Since time is at a premium for that, I don’t want to try something new at this point.

I don’t consider Weight Watchers a perfect plan, but it’s a good tool for tracking and limiting how much you eat. However, I don’t intend on joining this time around. I’ve never gotten much from the meetings, although I can see how people do (it’s just not for me); however, I find that just the act of going in and getting weighed by a complete stranger does motivate me to stay with it. I don’t know why, it just does. But, I don‘t really want to pay $12 a week just to get weighed. For now, I’m going to use the materials I already have, execute the plan on my own, and hope to get the same kind of accountability by writing on this blog!

Since I won’t be joining, my first step is buying a scale. I haven’t weighed myself in forever and I dread doing it, but I know I have to because I need to know what I’m working with in order to track my progress. So, today, I’ll be getting one and finding out just how much of the weight I gained back. Yikes!

I’ll be sure and update this post to let you know what happens with the scale.

Coming up in future posts: What I’ve learned from my past weight loss attempts and how pregnancy changed my perspective on losing weight and exercising (for the better!).