At it again...this time for good!

Hi everyone!

I've never been truly a hard body and, to be honest, I've struggled quite a bit with my weight since my mid 20s. In my early 30s, I joined a gym and started the Atkins diet after reaching an all time high of 210lbs. I was miserable at that point and made everyone around me miserable so much so that I lost a few amazing relationships, both friendly and romantic. Well, the exercise and diet worked and when all was said and done, I had lost 45 lbs! I was in the best shape of my life, looked great, felt great, and my life attitude soared. I began partying and drinking ALL THE TIME and before I knew it, exercise fell off my routine. After awhile, so did the Atkins way of eating.

One day, after the party in me subsided and I got a big boy job about 4 years ago, I looked down and realized that I weighed 190 lbs. I met the love of my life and during our dating era, I tried jumping on the Atkins diet again. Since being on Atkins, I have been plagued with kidney stones (not fun). I don't know how much of that I can attribute to high protein and low carb but in the back of my mind, I kind of always had my suspicions. Anyway, the weight fluctuated up and down and I found myself unable to stick with it.

In May, I married my girl but before that happened, I needed to lose weight. I couldn't go on our honeymoon out of shape and fat so I went back to my crutch in March and tried Atkins again. I was at 200 lbs and wanted to lose 25 lbs in a hurry. The day of my wedding, I weighed 183 lbs so I had satisfactory success. That went away and after not fitting in my clothes again, I jumped on the scale. To my dismay, I'm 5 pounds away from my heaviest. Yup, in the past 6 months, I gained 22 lbs. THIS REALLY CAN'T BE HEALTHY!!

While 40 has mellowed out my attitude, I still feel miserable about me...not so much that it affects my life like it did 10 years ago. I am, after all, older and wiser and happy with the rest of my life. The final straw (as if their really needs to be one) was the fact that I started a new job and had to buy a whole new wardrobe for work. Yessiree, now I have a whole slew of fat pants.

I found this site via an app for my phone and read many success stories here. I also love they way you guys motivate each other. I'm really excited about being a part of this community! So, here's my plan. I'm not doing the low carb, high protein thing anymore. I've been doing research and have discovered that just eating sensible and working out routinely should work. My goal is to lose 2 lbs per week for a total of 14 lbs by Thanksgiving. I just started yesterday and limited my caloric intake to 1692. In order to lose 2 lbs per week, I need to limit that to 1300 calories per day but I didn't find that out until last night. I also walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes at a moderate pace. I plan to do this walking for one week and then start adding 45 minutes of strength training daily. We'll see what happens...

It's great to meet all of you!

/k.