by Erin Hackney

Created on: October 08, 2008   Last Updated: June 29, 2009

My name is Erin and I'm overweight. That's all there is to it. Most of the time I eat pretty well and I exercise a couple times a weeks, so why am I 30 pounds overweight?

I gained about 50 pounds when I was pregnant with my daughter. I suffered from the same misconception as most pregnant women do, that the weight would come off when she came out. When she came out about 20 pounds dropped pretty quickly, while the remaining 30 have hung on for dear life. I started exercising more, I switched to all natural or organic products, and I gave up eating out. Unfortunately, three years later I'm still 30 pounds overweight. Then one day a friend told me I should start keeping a food diary. I started my food diary the next day. I wrote down every little morsel that went into my mouth. After two weeks I hadn't lost an ounce! The problem was with a very active three year old running around, I had time to jot down what I ate but not how many calories or fat for each item. This rendered my food diary completely ineffective. Then I discovered an on-line food diary.

I found a site called Fatsecret.com. All I had to do was register for free. I was able to add food directly from their database and it would automatically calculate the fat, calories, sugars, sodium, even weight watchers points for me. It helped me figure out what how many calories and fat grams I needed per day and then kept a running tally. I figured I was eating pretty moderately on my own so for the first day I ate exactly as I had been. What a shock I received, on an average day I was clearing about 1500-1700 calories easy. That's without sweets, snacking, or eating out. I was amazed to see how many absent calories I was ingesting butter, coffee creamer, and wine were by biggest offenders. A sample of my typical food day clicks or copy and paste this link, http://www.fatsecret.com/Diary.aspx?pa=fj&id=84991. Now that I had my 1600 calories staring me in the face it was hard to ignore and I immediately changed my diet. I made small changes like switching from coffee creamer to vanilla soy milk, thus eliminating cream and sugar. I started measuring my portions instead of just plopping food down. Thanks to my diary I now knew exactly how much I was consuming. It also helps me recognize when I could treat myself too. If I had gotten all the way through dinner and still had 200 calories to spare then a glass of wine was a nice reward.

The best reward so far, after a three year weight plateau, I've lost 8 pounds in three weeks. I can't believe it. I even dropped a jean size. I still can't believe how easy it was and really without any effort. I still have 20 pounds to go but this diary is definitely a moving me in the right direction. Sometimes I guess you do need a wake up call or a slap in the face to get in gear. My food diary is exactly what I needed.

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