What's brought me to the verge of starting a new plan

Website changes complete -- for now.

Okay, so my weight and eating habits have been awful the past two months. As I noted yesterday, I hit a new lifetime peak -- 207.8 pounds on September 25, 2006. I haven't exercised much and have begun to physically feel "not right" again -- I've finally noticed my hard breathing after minor exertions of energy. My scariest moment thus far was this past Monday -- because the elevators were momentarily down at my office building, I climbed about six and a half flights of stairs from the lobby to my office floor. I was able to do it relatively quickly (I was trying to get to a meeting on time), but I was quite winded, which I expected. What I did not expect, however, was feeling like my legs were going to give way with more than a flight to go. That really scared me.

Also that same day, I looked in the mirror at work and thought my face looked fat. Now, I've seen photographs of me and my face and knew I probably looked fat to most people, but I hadn't seen it as much when I looked at myself in the mirror -- I guess I kind of know how to hold my head when looking in the mirror to make it look the most flattering. (I think we all kind of do that -- that's why most of us can be shocked by how we look in a photograph.) Well, that day, even I thought my face looked fat.

Before that, however, I'd already become uncomfortable with my appearance in recent social situations. A couple of weeks ago I went to a nice get-together of professional women in my field, and I envied how good some of them looked. I also was warm and perspiring and was not wearing my best work outfit and felt even more self-conscious. I wanted to be able to wear some of the cute business suits the other women were wearing.

I suppose one of the reasons I've been so reckless with my eating and fitness habits the past few weeks is the stress over big changes at work. My boss left at the end of September, and we worked a few late evenings trying to wrap up a lot of things before she left. Then we had to get adjusted to the new boss who came in from outside our workplace -- none of us were sure what changes the new boss wanted to make, if any. I knew I could be let go at any time if she wanted to -- that is her perogative. At the same time, at least three people I worked with closely announced they were leaving for great career opportunities elsewhere. While I have had more hectic, stressful moments at my job, I now realize that this undercurrent of uncertainty over the past few weeks has taken its toll on me physically and emotionally.

The changes at work have started to settle down and I'm feeling more and more comfortable with my new boss. However, these recent changes have reminded me that my job is not a long-term one and that I have to look forward to what I'm going to do next. And part of that is reining my weight in, because I realize that being fat does impact what others think about you, at least when they first meet you.

So I started exploring options for getting this weight under control -- I'll talk more about that in the next post.

Changes coming . . .

Given that I haven't published for two months, you will not be surprised to learn that I have not been very successful on the weight loss front. In fact, it's been a near-disaster as I briefly hit another lifetime high (I'm under it right now). But I have some major changes planned -- and I'm glad to see that Blogger has upgraded its services just in time to coincide with my planned "upgrades." I'm going to play with the new options for a little bit before I discuss my diet plans further, but I promise I'll be back soon!