Until age 47 I didn’t pay much attention. Back in 2003 some of my online friends had been posting in their journals about their desire to loose weight and I did a little research just to make sure they knew not to loose TOO MUCH weight.

I found that the Body Mass Index is the primary measure of a healthy weight. For adults (21 and up) the healthy range of BMI is 19 to 25. Unfortunately at 6 feet tall and 200 pounds I was at a BMI of 27.1… 23 pounds over the upper limit!

I was not alone, over half the male adult population is above the 25 mark. To get into the healthy range (BMI=25) I have to get down to 177. To get to the MIDDLE of the healthy range (BMI=21) I would have to get down to 160.

By accident I created a diet I call the Big Lunch Diet. This is the story of how I stumbled into it. NOTE: The Big Lunch Diet worked (eventually) for me but I have no idea if it is safe or effective for anyone else.

One Sunday I had a huge lunch. It was so large I wasn’t hungry till mid-day on Monday! On that Monday I had a fairly large slab of Prime Rib for lunch and again I wasn’t really hungry for the rest of the day.

I weighed myself on Tuesday morning and found that I weighed 194, less than at any time in the last few years. It wasn’t close to 177 (or 160) but it was a change for the better.

Of course I would exercise some. On nice days I would walk a mile or two after lunch. I would take the stairs to my 4th-floor office at least twice a day, sometimes two at a time, sometimes double-time.

The beauty of the Big Lunch Diet is that you get to pig-out one hour a day. You eat meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts and grains until you have no room for dessert… Then have NO calories (or at least VERY few) for the rest of the day.

If you get hungry in the morning just drink some water and anticipate the joys of a big lunch. If you get hungry at night just drink some water and remember how much you ate at lunch.

It took about eight months but I got my weight down to 161. After going back to three meals a day I was able to keep my weight well under 170 for several years, just by skipping an occasional meal if my weight got above 165.

One day I finally decided to turn my life around and joined Weight Watchers. I learned how to read labels, watch my portion sizes, and exercise in moderation.

The meetings were extremely helpful in keeping me motivated. My leader was an inspiration and being around people dealing with the same weight issues as myself aided in my weight loss.

I lost 40 pounds almost exclusively through dieting. Exercise has never appealed to me and my only form of it consists of walking my dog.

I currently weigh 175 and my goal weight is 160. I hope to achieve this weight within the next six months.

My boyfriend is currently on deployment and a group of us women from the boat have decided to do the biggest loser. We are basically weighing ourselves at our monthly meetings and the woman who loses the most at the end of deployment wins a pot of about $300.

This time around I’m using the money, and the look of shock on my boyfriend’s face as my motivation. I have stepped up my walking and would like to join a gym once the weather gets cooler.

These last 15 lbs are going to be the hardest to lose. It’s more difficult to lose weight when you are alone, especially for someone who eats when she is bored.

I keep a lot of low-calorie snacks in the house in case I get the munchies.

You really need to rely on yourself and your personal self control to see through it to the end. Being healthy for my family is very important to me and I want to reach my goal weight before I start having children.

One must understand that in order to keep the weight off, you can’t go on a diet, you need to change your lifestyle. I continue to work on that and hope that the end result will come soon.

I was a gestational diabetic during my pregnancy, so I have structured a diet for myself that follows some of the same principles as the diet I was on before. I limit the carbohydrates I have at any one meal and eat more frequently during the day.

I have three main meals a day plus three snacks. It is not a difficult diet to follow, but it has required that I really think about what I eat. One of the biggest things is portion size, especially around breakfast time.

When I have cereal, I use a small bowl and if I have to, I measure the cereal to make sure I am eating the right portion size. I only allow myself to have 30 grams of carbohydrate at breakfast and 45 to 60 grams of carbohydrate at lunch and dinner. For snacks I can have 15 to 20 grams of carbohydrate.

I was amazed to learn that a 4 ounce glass of skim milk has 15 grams of carbohydrate. That is why I measure things if I have too!

For exercise, I am up and down the stairs with my daughter several times a day. But, I also meet another Mom and walk two times a week.

At home, I try to be as active as possible during the day because everything adds up. I also make a point to do push up and abdominal exercises at least once a day.

I usually do those while my daughter is in the floor playing because I can just lay down with her. Yard work is also a way that I build more exercise into my day.

When I lost weight in the past it was right after the birth of my first child. At that time I weighed 170 pounds (after I had her) and wanted to get down some where between 140 to 150 pounds.

I read several diet books before finally deciding on one diet.

The diet I chose to do was the Atkins Diet by Dr. Atkins. I began the diet around the beginning of May 2001. I followed the diet which was not easy to do. If you are not familiar with the diet, it is a high protein, no/low carbs diet.

I had to cut out all of my starches and sugars which meant cutting out bread, soda, tea, pasta, potatoes (of any kind), certain processed foods, etc.

Basically on the Atkins Diet you mainly drink water and eat lots of meat, some fruits and some vegetables. It was hard at first because I would get caffeine headaches, felt like I was starving to death and was always tired. I had almost no energy.

After I was on the diet for about two weeks, it did become easier. I tried to have one cheat day per week but on that cheat day, I did not over do it.

I would limit myself to how many carbs I had that day so I had to watch my intake of sugars, starches and of course, the carbs. If I had a sip of soda, it felt disgusting.

My teeth felt like they were just caked in sugar which was a gross feeling. Anyway, I started losing weight almost immediately. I think after the first two weeks, I had lost about five pounds. At the end of those two weeks, going without carbs no longer had an effect on me.

I didn’t need them anymore. I also seemed to have more energy and no longer had caffeine headaches. I continued with the diet but did no exercise what so ever. I did not have time to exercise as I was a single mom and worked a full time job.

The job that I worked required me to be on my feet and moving around the entire day so keeping active was no problem.

After I had been on the diet for two months, I did lose a total of twenty-five pounds which put me at my goal or target weight of 145. I felt great!!

As you can see, the weight pretty much fell off with this diet and I was very impressed……until one day in August.

In August I became violently ill. I was so sick that I ended up going to the hospital. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me. After a CAT Scan and an Ultrasound, they determined what the problem was.

It turned out that this high protein (high fat) diet had ruined my gall bladder forever. They scheduled me for surgery the following week with a general surgeon.

There I was a week later laying on the operating table under the knife. The surgeon removed my gall bladder which was the size of a Nerf Football, highly enlarged. Even though they removed my gall bladder, the ducts are still there.

To this day, I still cannot have fried or greasy food as it causes those ducts to become clogged and it makes me ill. Sometimes I get sick without eating those types of foods and when I do, I vomit bile which smells like sewage and I’m usually out of commission for about a week.

All I can do is lie in bed in severe pain and wait for it to pass. I’ve never had gall stones, oddly enough. I would not recommend this diet to anyone who appreciates not throwing up bile, having severe cramping and does not wish to have surgery.

My latest was the biggest loser diet in which I had lost 20lbs and felt great. I followed it for 4 months. I exercised by walking only. I never was the type to enjoy vigorous exercising.

Actually, I depise it and refuse to do anything if I have to work out.

I didn’t follow the diet plan but followed the calorie intake that was required.

By doing this made the plan a lot easier to follow. This didn’t make it difficult at all.

I’ve also was on the South beach diet when it first came out. There I went from 205 lbs to 135 in a year.

That was an easy plan. No Carbs simple as that but boring. I ate the same thing for 1 year. I never exercised in which I didn’t have too. Once the weight came off, I did more activities that felt like exercising.

I may go back to that plan. The meals were simple to make, I didn’t have to wrack my brain on what ingredients I needed and I didn’t have to fuss over what I wanted, Yes like I mentioned earlier it gets boring but the results were awesome.

I’ve tried Diet pills in the past. Now that Ephedra was taken off the market, Pills don’t work anymore. Metabolife worked wonders also for me. I dropped 10 lbs in two weeks and yes I did feel jittery but gave me that energy to get up and go.