To Get Out of the "Obese" Category!

My number 3 reason for getting in shape...I hate to admit it, but for several years I've fallen into the "obese" category. When I first discovered this years ago, I found it hard to believe, because as I looked around me there were so many HUGE people who were SO much bigger than me, they defined "obese" to me, not my own shape. Of course over time I came to accept that it's really about body mass index (BMI) and how much fat we carry around. There's no doubt I have too much fat and I need to change that dynamic. First I was in disbelief the label applied to me, then more or less denial that it mattered, and now I accept it and recognize that only one person can do anything about it, and that's me.

I'm not out to achieve a specific weight. I have a "goal ballpark" I'm aiming for of around 150lbs, but that's flexible - maybe 160 will work for me, maybe I can get to 140, I really don't know. For my height, 5'6", that's a decent range. Height-weight tables tell me for my frame I should weigh 130-144. I don't know if that's realistic, it's too far removed from where I am to matter to me right now. So I'll aim in the right direction, head for a ballpark, and see how things are going when I get closer to my target range. That's still a long way off, so no sense in worrying about it.

What I can focus on in the meantime though is at least getting out of the "obese" range and into the merely overweight range. Still not good, but a step in the right direction! Everyone knows obesity causes all sorts of health problems.

I've gathered up all my books on diet, exercise, etc. So many programs I never got through...I'll read them here and there and take the good/useful portions and discard the rest. One issue I have with a lot of the more popular eating plans is that adapting them to vegetarian/vegan is a process that takes awhile. I've had my best past success with the Scarsdale Diet, but although I like that diet a great deal because it's easy to follow and you don't have to count calories (and it works!) it is not well suited to vegetarian. It has a vegetarian suggested menu, but it's all so unappetizing I know I couldn't stick to it, realistically. So I don't think that will work this time around.

Still struggling with the water thing. It will take awhile, probably several weeks or longer, to get used to changing that habit. I just have to work on it every day and pay attention to it.