Editor’s note: IF you read this blog post, please comment. I am trying to hold myself accountable, and I need the motivation/realization that people are reading.

In 2006, while in grad school, I gained a lot of weight. By March 2009, I had lost most of it. It is now July 2010, and all the weight I lost is back. That is about 40 pounds.

I’m back to square one, and I need to do more than just a temporary loss this time.

I need to change the way I exercise and the way I eat. With my bad ankle, I just can’t do what I used to do in terms of exercise. I started with a trip to my doctor this morning. I have an official weight, which was actually less than I expected by about 4 pounds or so. I will not be weighing in regularly, but I will try to rely on the monthly weight at my doctor’s office as well as other tells like the fit of my clothes.

My doctor recommended Weight Watchers or the South Beach Diet. She said the people she knows who have been successful with weight loss were the ones who go to Weight Watchers. She said the biggest reason they did so was guilt. The weekly meetings require you to face your actions and guilt you into doing better.

I have looked into Weight Watchers before, and I have considered it. I know people who have been pretty successful on it as well, but I thought I could do the guilt right here in cyberspace as well. If I commit to Fat Fridays, I can have that guilt factor right here. I’m not going to rule out Weight Watchers, but I want to try some other things first.

And the other thing is The South Beach Diet, which my doctor said is just a healthy way to eat. She says I could lose 5 to 10 pounds in the first two weeks if I follow it. She says the diet eases up after that. Plus she told me about a mashed cauliflower recipe that seemed pretty unbelievable.

South Beach means I have to give up potatoes. OK, I don’t know exactly since I’ve only read up to chapter two in my new book (The South Beach Diet Super Charged), but from what my doctor said, it is bye bye potatoes. I eat a lot of potatoes. I am not looking forward to that.

But I can also eat cheese, which is a good thing since I love cheese more than potatoes. One snack my doctor mentioned was mozzarella sticks, which is something I already snack on.

My doctor also suggested my life style contributed to my weight gain, which I really did know already. It probably isn’t a coincidence that I gained weight during Little League season. We had games almost every night, and we probably had various forms of fast food way more than we should have.

I need to finish reading (or at least read a bit further) the South Beach Diet to figure out exactly where I need to start. I plan to start today as much as possible, and be completely on the new diet by Monday. This allows me time to finish reading and plan meals.

I know I am doing some good things now. I already prefer whole wheat to white breads. I normally don’t snack on candy or cookies or chips. I prefer popcorn, nuts and cheeses. I even eat veggies as snacks, which my husband thinks this is weird. But I have fallen into bad habits, and sometimes I eat candy (like yesterday).

If I had to guess, my biggest problems are my choice of drinks. I have about two to three cups of coffee each morning, and I use a lot of flavored cream. I also drink more alcohol than I should although recently I have switched to drinking more wine and less beer. I sometimes drink pop, and I have been drinking a lot of lemonade.

My second biggest problem is my lifestyle. I work primarily online, which means I spend a lot of time sitting in my living room with a computer on my lap. I need to make it a point to get up and move more. One thing I already read in the South Beach diet book was how even minor technology is reducing how much we exercise. The author, Dr. Arthur Agatston, specifically mentioned the remote control. When I was a kid, my dad used to call me. I would come downstairs to change the TV channel for him. This was before remote controls existed. He was just a couple of steps away, but he had me do it for him.

I’ve told that story more than once, and it always seemed so funny. He refused to get up and walk a few steps to change the TV channel, so he would call me downstairs. But when I read the South Beach book’s comment about the remote control, I realized I’m not any different. I might not be calling my kids downstairs, but I am still just a few steps away and can’t bother to physically get up and change it myself. OK, nowadays, it is hard to change a channel by hand. You need the remote control. But maybe with this awareness, I can make a small change: that when I do use the remote to change the channel, I need to take a break from the computer and get up and walk around a little bit.

As of today, I plan to make these immediate changes:

• No fast food meals
• No pop
• Only one cup of coffee with cream a day — I may have more coffee, but no more cream
• Get up and move more during my work. Especially when I do any activity that would normally have required me to get up and move around without technology: answering the phone or changing the channel or looking up a phone number or directions to anywhere.

And to make sure that I have that guilt/embarrassment factor on the blog (which my doctor feels is an important motivation factor in losing weight), I need to tell all of you my weight. Yikes. I didn’t mind telling you in the past because I was losing weight and doing something positive to lose weight. But now I have to tell you how bad I have been although it is pretty easy to figure out just by looking at me. In March 2009, I weight 207 pounds. A few months ago, I weighed about 230. Today, I weighed 246. I expected it to be 250 or more.

My height is between 5’7 and 5’8. Let’s go with 5 feet 7.5 inches. Although yesterday, a guy realized he was shorter than me and thought he was 5 foot 9 inches, which means one of us is wrong.

As for exercise, I am still figuring it all out. I have severe degenerative arthritis in my right ankle. I qualify for ankle replacement surgery, but I have been advised to put off surgery as long as possible. To help with my ankle pain, I sometimes take 500 mg of Naproxen. My prescription allows for two of those a day as needed. I am supposed to do primarily non weight bearing exercises, so I’ve been doing some bicycling. I like bicycling, but if I push myself too far, my butt is too sore to bike for a couple of days despite my extra cushy bike seat. I think I am going to have to do more and just be willing to take my medicine more often.

So there it is. My weight is up there somewhere although I did my best to bury it. For my weight loss journey, I am once again starting all over, and I know, I will be successful.

And one last thing — it can be very easy for me to pretend that no one reads this blog. This sort of defeats the purpose of putting my weight out there for the guilt/embarrassment factor, so if you have read this far, please comment. I might cringe to realize exactly how many of you know I now weigh 246 pounds, but I need the motivation and accountability.

About the Photo: Yes, it really is my butt on the right hand side of the photo. The picture is from June 2010.