Good Calories, Bad Calories

I am overweight. I have been overweight my entire life. I was the only baby in the hospital nursery to gain weight before going home. It is so much a part of who I am that I don't really think about it all that often, until it's time to buy clothes.

But I am with a man who wants to marry me and have children with me. Knowing that made me re-evaluate my size and its potential impact on my possible future children. This fact combined with my increasing episodes of arthritic pain have made me realize I need to get my weight under control.

One of the reasons I've never lost weight is I hate dieting...I hate being hungry, I hate thinking I can never have food that I like. I know this is a big issue for most dieters. So I wasn't really sure how I was going to approach my required new weight-loss regimen.

Then I was catching up on articles from the Advice Goddess, and I found this post, mentioning the book Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. I bought it the next day, and spent three days reading it. Don't get me wrong...normally I could read a book that size in one day, but this book is so fact-heavy that it took me a long time to work my way through it.

It is eye-opening and provocative, and probably the most encouraging book I have ever read as a fat woman. It is SO nice to see in black-and-white that it's not just "my fault", I'm not just "lazy" and I'm not lying about how much I eat. I have many slim friends who eat significantly more than I do, and who never struggle with their weight. I know many who also are not nearly as physically active as I am, yet they never deal with the excessive weight I do.

If you are overweight, or you love someone who is, I urge you to read Good Calories, Bad Calories right away. I will post later about my new diet, but for now know that I have applied the principles in this book and for the first time in at least two decades, I have started losing weight.