A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Step

Well, here I am. I'm finally ready to get back on the weight loss wagon.

A little about me: I'm 27 years old and currently a stay at home mom while I'm on maternity leave (yay for awesome Canadian benefits!). I've been struggling with my weight all my life. I gained quite a bit of weight while I was pregnant with my son and I am finding that I no longer have the time I used to have for grocery shopping and cooking healthy meals. My son was born in October 2009 and we've been eating mostly takeout and frozen food since then!

In May 2006, I joined Herbal Magic, which is a great weight loss program that actually works. I lost over 60lbs in a year by following the program fairly closely (although I must confess that I wasn't perfect and I did cheat occasionally) and it's definitely something I would recommend. However, when I went back to school and stopped following my program, the pounds started to creep back on.

Herbal Magic is not the best choice for me to lose weight at this point in my life because I found I spent a lot of time preparing my meals and weighing and measuring my food, and that's time I just don't have anymore when I am taking care of my son. I would definitely recommend it to people who do have time and enjoy cooking though, as I loved the freedom of still being able to eat food I loved and prepared myself while I lost weight. The program is expensive (about $75 a week) but at some point you need to consider what you are losing if you don't do it.

I enjoy watching the Biggest Loser and it was a real shocker to realize that I was as heavy as some of the female contestants on the show. When I watched the episode where the doctor examined them and talked about their health risks, it really made me start to think. I cried when they showed the contestants' Real Ages- how old their body thinks they are- and saw how many years of their lives were going to vanish because of obesity. I looked at my son and knew that I didn't want to pass up even a single minute with him- so I had to do something about my weight.

I thought about how much money we were spending on prepared meals, and decided that if I was going to spend money on prepared food, it may as well be healthy prepared food. I did some research into the popular premade meal weight loss programs and chose Nutrisystem to try.

The website made things pretty simple. It asked me questions about my height and weight, how much I wanted to lose, and asked me to choose my breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack selections from a fairly diverse list (although I'm still grumbling that the American site has quite a few more choices than the Canadian site). You can also choose to let them send you a selection of their most popular meals instead if you like but I preferred to pick my own. I chose to have my food autoshipped to me to get a $20 discount plus two free weeks of food, entered my credit card info, and that was it.

Now I'm just waiting to receive my order- the website says four to ten business days to receive my meals. I'm also getting their Jumpstart program, whatever that is. I guess I'll find out when my box arrives.

I'm ready to make a positive change in my life again. I felt really good about myself and much happier after losing the weight on Herbal Magic, and now I have so many more reasons to get healthy. I've done it before, and I can do it again.

I can't wait for my box to arrive so I can get started!