I've been overweight since about the age of 10. I managed to take a bit off after high-school and lost about 30 lbs. doing WeightWatchers, going below 200 for the first time I could remember in years. In recent years my weight has ballooned-- I went from 220 post-pregnancy in 2004 to 280 today. I attribute a lot of this to a bad diet, and also because of the sedentary lifestyle I had while my daughter was hospitalized and just general grief-eating after her death. I also have hypothyroidism and PCOS which doesn't help matters.

I'm 5"9' and have always hid my weight very well. It's finally catching up to me, though, and I am having a lot of knee and back issues and I feel like my weight is a lot more noticeable than it used to be. We also want to have more children soon and I'd like to have at least lost a little weight and have a better diet before we TTC. You may notice my posted goal is 230, but I'm just trying to pace myself by setting shorter goals. I would eventually like to get down to a healthy BMI for my height, which would be 130-160. I think I'd look fine and feel fine at the higher end of that, but also I'm small boned, so maybe the lower end would be better. I'm just going to wait until I'm closer and go from there. I am getting married in 10 mo. and I'm hoping my current challenge of 50 lbs. will be a reasonable goal by then. I've been improving my diet and cutting sugar for awhile now, but felt a stricter diet would help me achieve my goals better. Wish me luck! :)

FYI-- my weight graph might look a little odd now because I changed it to include the 6 lbs. I lost pre-Atkins. I started Atkins at 280, regardless of what my weight history says.