I'm normal!

Today, I hit a major milestone. For the first time in my adult life, I officially have a healthy weight according to the BMI charts! I can't believe how far I have come! Last may I was morbidly obese and now, I am normal and it feels great.

The other thing that this milestone means is that I can start to look forward to the future and the time when I will focus on maintaining a healthy weight for the rest of my (now statistically longer) life. I told my health educator that 2 weeks from today I want to transition to Healthy Solutions. Healthy Solutions is a diet program designed to help people lose about 30 lbs over the course of 12 weeks. The plan is to have 3 shakes, 2 entrees and 5 cups of fruits and vegetables a day. I will go through a 4 (maybe longer) week transitional period during which I will slowly add vegetables and fruit into my diet.

I have been pretty reluctant to switch to this program because I hear lots of people complain about slow loses (like .5 lbs a week) on the program. Despite encouragement from some friends and family, I held out because I'm pretty concerned about being frustrated. As a result, i decided to wait until any additional weight loss during the HS diet would be like icing on the cake.

I don't know how long I'll be on Healthy Solutions. I've really enjoyed the structure that I get in this program so adding the variety may be a bit of a challenge for me. Also, to make things harder, I will be moving across the country in June and I'm not really sure what how that is going to impact my diet. Right now, I plan on sticking to fruits and vegetables through the move, if anything, because its easy.

Finally though, I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel. And I can't wait to have some asparagus!