Let Me Count the Ways I've Tried ...

I think I've been on a diet my whole life and I guess that's going to continue for the rest of it. Happily, with my brand-spankin' new Gastric Sleeve, I have a tool that will help me stay on it and force the issue a bit. OK, more than a bit.

I feel like I've tried almost every diet out there and that's no exaggeration. I've tried and I've tried and I've tried and I've tried. Here's some of the ways:

• Weight Watchers: Really my favorite because it's balanced. It was always my go to diet, but I had trouble staying on it because of our lifestyle, going back and forth to visit my husband who works in West Africa. Then he comes home about every eight weeks or so and wants to be "on vacation," which translates to eating and drinking probably more than we should. Then I go see him and we do the same thing. About the time I would get momentum, it would go buh-bye out on the deck with martinis and a little smoked salmon plate.

• South Beach: Worked pretty well, but same problem as WW. Some pretty decent recipes in their cookbooks.

• Jenny Craig: I'm too good of a cook to last long on Jenny Craig. Just thought most things were tasteless and expensive.

• Nutrisystem: I lost my pregnancy weight with Nutrisystem, although I have the same problem with them. Tasteless. Then I even went on Nutrisystem for a radio station I used to work for, and I'd run into the diet police at the grocery store -- peering into my basket to see what groceries I had in there.

• Fen-Phen: Loved fen-phen in the mid-90s. Loved it! I had to be reminded to eat and lost weight like crazy. Lost about 42 pounds and then the boom (heart valve defects) came down on it and it was suddenly off the market. Sigh. Weight came back like iron filings to a magnet however.

• Diet Center: I don't remember much about this one, but it was a long time ago.

• Hypnosis and Mental Gastric Band: I think my head is just too stubborn for this, although I loved my hypnotherapist (who will remain unnamed.)

• Hypnosis and little steel balls under tape that went behind my ears: Ditto, and those steel balls were supposed to simulate acupuncture. Rub them when you were hungry and it was supposed to go away. Didn't work.

• Atkins: Worked but became bored with only eating protein. Used something similar to whip off the last five to 10 pounds for pageants in my early 20s and was very effective.

• Reynolds Clinic/Oklahoma City: started with a two-day juice fast and the doc provided thyroid drugs and some kind of uppers. Pretty balanced diet and got down to 115 pounds on this one in the late 70s, early 80s, just in time for my 10-year high school reunion.

I'm sure there were others like the Grapefruit Diet, or the Standing on Your Head Eating Sardines Diet, but they all just kind of mush together.

The gastric sleeve surgery I had Dec. 27, is the first best hope I've had in a long time that I'll get back to being fit and trim. It really is going to happen this time, and I'm so excited to be on this journey. I'm feeling very empowered.

My next goal is to dispense with weighing every day. Just too much fun right now, but I know the "Big Stall" is coming -- I've been warned -- and so probably after my two-week appointment Monday, and weigh-in, I'll go to once a week.

Yes, I can

So here I go. I could always wait until the new year or when Bob leaves for overseas Saturday, but I'm thinking I need to make a lifestyle change and now.

The debut of "Takin' a Load Off" is to chronicle getting healthier and happier with myself -- the whys and hows of staying on or falling off. It's being accountable and being able to better track what works and what doesn't. And hopefully, it will help me track what makes me successful.

I've been pondering what help I'm going to use. The programs I'm considering are Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig.

I've used Nutrisystem once before about 21 years ago to lose my baby fat after having my darlin' daughter. It worked and I lost the about 25 pounds I had leftover, but having to eat only their food was pretty boring and awful. And I need to lose way more than 25 pounds.

The same objection goes for Jenny Craig, which I also used successfully a long, long time ago. Their food is also boring, boring, boring. And neither Nutrisystem or Jenny Craig allow for anything off their program, which would be tough for traveling.

Weight Watchers has both good things about it and other things that probably contribute to having fallen off before. The good things are that I can cook my own food and make it taste better and be more satisfying. I can travel and make good choices about what goes into my mouth. I can control my own destiny. If I bite it, I write it, is a WW phrase that comes to mind.

The hardest part is one of the other catch phrases, "If I drink it, I ink it." Although WW allows wine or other alcoholic beverages, after one or two glasses of wine, I don't particularly care about journaling and that's one of the things that makes me successful. If Bob wants to have a martini watching the sun go down, it's going to be awfully hard to sit there not imbibing a bit too. The key is having just one, or maybe two. And no mas.

So I think WW wins. I checked and there is a 5 p.m. meeting that I think I'll attend. My favorite WW leader too. One step at a time.