Unbelievable as it may sound, when I was born I weighed 4 pounds. All through grade school, I was always the shortest and skinniest kid there. When I hit puberty, all that changed. As soon as I got my first period, I started to gain weight. And gain. . .and gain! When I graduated from 9th grade I weighed 160 lbs. My mother took me to the doctor and he put me on a "diet." You all know "(/B)THE Diet!" Salads and salads and more salads. No candy, or cookies, or ice cream, or soda. . .or any of the other things all my friends were eating! I did lose 20 pounds that summer and stayed at a still chubby for my height (5'3"), but tolerable weight of 140 pounds through high school. Two and a half years after I graduated from high school I got married and pregnant. (Actually, it was the other way around! :up That's when the weight (/B)REALLY started to pile on! I had two babies in fourteen months and never did lose much weight between them. By the time my second daughter was born I weight 200 pounds. During my second pregnancy, I read about low-carb eating and I asked my doctor about it. He said it was a very unhealthy way of eating and that if I wanted to lose weight I should just "eat less." (How many times have we all heard (/B)THAT one!)
Over the next almost thirty years, I tried every diet known to man. I did the grapefruit diet. I did the rotation diet. I did Overeaters Anonymous, I did Weight Watchers. I did Jenny Craig. As I'm sure you all know, they all (/B)WORKED! -- for a while. But, inevitably, hunger won out. I couldn't eat 1/2 slice of bread and 2 oz. of dry tuna for lunch and be satisfied. So I'd slip off the diet and back to my old eating habits. And all the weight I'd lost would come back -- and some more to keep it company! I finally topped off (so I thought) at 250 lbs. I stayed at that weight for more than ten years. Then, last November I went to the doctor for a check-up and found that somehow, in the previous year, I'd managed to gain another 10 pounds. "You need to lose weight," he snapped at me. (Gee, Doc, really? Duh!) Two weeks after my doctor's visit I went on a cruise. When I came back, I had managed to gain yet (/B)ANOTHER 6 pounds. I was now at the highest weight I had ever been in my life. I knew I had to do something (maybe kill myself?), but I didn't know what. After all, hadn't I tried and failed at every weight loss attempt I'd ever made? I was at the end of my rope.
On New Year's Eve (during the day) I was at the grocery store and I was looking in the paperback books section looking for something to read. I saw a book called, "The Carbohydrate Addict's Lifespan Program." I picked in up and started reading it. Right from the beginning I felt that the authors were talking about me -- and (/B)TO me! I bought the book, brought it home and started reading it. I took the "test" and found out that I am, indeed, a carbohydrate addict. But before I jumped into this, I wanted to do some research. After all, hadn't my own doctor told me that low-carb eating was unhealthy and even dangerous?
Well, thirty years ago I didn't have the resources available that I do today. I went on-line and looked and looked and read and read and read some more. I've been "lurking" here on this forum for almost two weeks now. I talked to my DH. He has always been very supportive of me in all my many efforts to lose weight, and he never, ever tells me I'm wasting my time. I finally set a start date of 1/13/02. I spent a week "preparing" myself -- drinking lots more water, cutting out the soda, and cutting down on caffeine and sugar. To my surprise, I had lost 6 pounds before I even really began! I am very optimistic. I've made a commitment to this (/B)WOL and I know that these forums will help.

Stormy