Reclaiming My Waistline (I Hope)

A good friend of mine, who also happens to be a prolific blogger wrote a post detailing her plan to lose weight by May.   There is a performance that she is getting ready for in May and apparently there is a special costume involved.  So she has posted her intentions for all to see.   A smart thing really as all the experts tell us that when it comes to weight loss it does help to write down our goals as well as every morsel of food that passes our lips.

So I’m going to follow my friend’s example and bravely state here that I am going to lose 40 pounds by June.  Why June?  Because that’s when hubby returns from Iraq and I want to look amazing when he sees me at the airport.  To be honest, I’ve had these intentions every year along with the rest of America.  Each and every new year, I’m full of good intentions and resolutions and the first item on the list is always “lose weight.”  And of course, after the first couple of months all those good intentions go down the drain.

So what is different this year?  Well along with just vanity, that is, wanting to look incredible for my hubby, I’ve also got a great network of sistas doing this with me now.  There are 6 of us all trying to lose weight and we’ve all sort of agreed on summertime as the goal line.  Of course, we all have different reasons for this deadline, one has a family reunion coming up, another a wedding, and a variety of other things that are going on in the summer.  We’re all helping each other along this slippery slope, otherwise known as weight loss.

My friends and I, and they really are great friends, have several things in common.   For example, we are all Polys or Polynesians for those who don’t know the lingo:-).   Two of us are Samoans and my other 4 friends are Tongans.  We all live in the same town and we do a lot of things together, take the kids to the pool, trips to the library, lunches at Olive Garden, etc.  By the way, whoever said that Samoans and Tongans don’t get along?  Don’t you get tired of that old stereotype?  I sure do.

We decided to start our own support group since we all have basically the same foods as well as cultural and social attitudes toward food.  No one else but another sista understands that a meal consisting only of a green salad is not a meal at all, that you can only have salads for so long before you go completely bananas, or that a steak the size of your palm should be considred an appetizer, lol.   With such challenges in mind, we’ve decided that we’ll support each other in our weight loss goals but tailor our meals to what we really do eat on a daily basis.

It’s been a few weeks since we started and so far so good.  We’re having fun and helping each other lose weight.  Of course, the challenge is to keep it up and we’re well aware of that.  We also know that there will be some setbacks (i.e. those days when you just have to have the big bowl of ice cream as well as the big slice of cake, or those days when the whole family gets together for to’onai and all the favorites from home are there in front of you) so we’ll enjoy those days but then try to get back on track again immediately after. 

Along with our renewed attention to our diets, we’re also rededicating ourselves to working out.  This is actually the easy part for me as I’m already working out 5 days a week and as I mentioned in another post, I look forward to working out now.  I never would have said that a year ago, but over the last 6 months, exercising started to grow on me to the point where I now hate it when I do miss a workout.  Who knew?