Healthy Obsession??

 I’ve found a new healthy food.  It’s ginger.  I just can’t get enough of ginger tea or ginger cookies.  Yes I said cookies.  A co-worker introduced me to Jamaican Ginger Biscuits and now I eat way too many of them.  And the tea is not exactly tea.  It’s called ginger drink.  Each bag contains 20 sachets of ginger and honey granules.  The granules can be dissolved in either hot or cold water.  On average I drink two sachets a day in 12 oz of water. 

I hear some of you scoffing at my calling ginger cookies healthy.  But consider this: ginger has a high amount of antioxidants; it’s good for sore throats and nausea.  But let me tell you what I find it good for, moving the old bowels.  After eating almost a whole pack of Jamaican Ginger Biscuits followed by 12 oz of “ginger drink” I know that my behind will be kissing the toilet seat soon as the ginger removes the waste from my body.  So there.  Ginger cookies, “ginger drink”—healthy.  Right?

Welcome

I’ve fallen off the wagon.  In 2004 I lost 63 lbs.  I went from weighing 205 to 142 lbs.  My highest weight was actually 225 lbs.  But I had lost 20 lbs before officially deciding to lose weight.  How’d I lose all that weight, you ask?  Well to be honest, it was easier than I’d thought.  I read a lot of magazines.  I tried a lot of new healthy foods.  I discovered I loved to exercise.  It was fun.  It was exciting.  The compliments from people were pretty ego boosting.  It was a blast.  That is until I woke up one day and suddenly had emotional problems.  See, I had worked through the mental aspect of weight loss.  That’s how I was able to lose 83 lbs in the first place.  Then suddenly I was hit with an urge I had never had before: the need to comfort myself with food.  I had never been an emotional eater.  Actually even when I weighed 225 lbs and would feel sad or depressed about something, the last thing I wanted to do was eat.

So how is it after joyfully and easily losing 83 lbs, I was suddenly eating my emotions?  I mean, I had battled weight and won dammit!  I can’t now be eating my emotions.

Going from 142 lbs to my current 180 lbs did not happen overnight.  I fought my way up to this weight.  I’d gain, and then go on an impossible, inhumane diet, exercise four times a day only to keep gaining.  So what happened to me?  Did I just one day decide to hell with it?  Well, that was a cycle in itself.  My internal dialogue went something like this:

            It’s what’s on the inside that counts.

            I want an hour glass figure

            The average American woman is a size 14 and I’m a size…oh…medium.

            I want to be skinny.

            Lots of women are not a size 2 yet are beautiful, confident and successful.

            I WANNA BE PRETTY!!!

So here I am again.  On this journey again.  This time my goal is to weigh 140 lbs.  I plan on doing some old exercises, eat some old healthy favorites as well as doing exercises and eating healthy foods not yet tried.

My name is Rhode-Elise St. Jacques.  And my resolution for this 2010 is the same as it was in 2004: to lose weight.

Won’t you join me?