Check, check. Umm...hello...is this thing on?

So, Tony has asked me, the afore mentioned “lovely wife,” to become an actual contributor to his blog. For those of you who don’t know me, I tend to be a bit verbose, so I know this post is going to be long. My intent is not to take over my darling husband’s piece of the blogosphere, but I felt a little background info was in order.

I have lost and won countless battles in this seemingly never-ending war with the scale. When I was pregnant with twins, I was encouraged to eat (A LOT) because I was losing weight. I lost 15 pounds over the course of my pregnancy, before giving birth. It was fantastic! McDonald’s double cheeseburgers and milkshakes were finally an approved part of my diet and my nightly bowl of ice cream was practically prescribed.

Mid-March, when the girls were about 14 months old, I was the heaviest I had ever been and was staring down the barrel of my 35th birthday. I decided it was time to make a change.

I decided I didn’t want my two beautiful little girls to have to struggle with their weight and body image the same way I have throughout my life. I decided that I needed to lose weight in order to keep up with them and to be around for the long haul. I also decided I was sick and tired of having to shop the plus-sized clothing racks.

I joined Weight Watchers (WW) on March 9, 2007. I lost a few pounds here, gained a couple there, and would only show up at meetings once every three weeks or so. I lost a total of 11.8 pounds, but I was having a lot of trouble staying on track. Then Tony made his grand announcement to the world and got serious about his own weight loss. His unflagging discipline has been fantastic motivation for me.

I will admit, his streak of amazing losses has had me jealous some weeks (and occasionally downright bitter), but I'm very happy for him and just have to remind myself that men lose weight much differently than women do.

We have become comrades in the trenches in this war against the scale and it’s amazing how much easier it is to keep fighting when you’ve got someone fighting by your side. In my mind, this is the final battle and I am going to keep fighting until I win. If it means that I have to go to a WW meeting every Friday morning at 7:30 for the rest of my life, so be it. It’s worth it, and so am I.

So, in the spirit of Guess How Much I Weigh, I think it’s only fair that I provide full disclosure, too. When I stepped on the scale at my first WW meeting, I weighed (gulp!) 228.4 pounds. That’s a number I don’t ever want to see again.

Thanks to Tony for asking me to “weigh-in” with him every week. I will try to keep my posts shorter from here on out. My weekly update is below.

Have a fantastic weekend!
Laura (a.k.a., Elle Tee Jay)

03/09/2007: 228.6 pounds
09/21/2007: 202.0 pounds (a loss of 0.8 this week)
Total loss: 26.4 pounds
Next mini-goal: 199.9 by 10/15/2007; 2.1 pounds to go
(wouldn’t it be sweet to do it in one week?)