I had known for quite some time that my weight was a wall I had put around me. I had been hurt many times during my life and to combat that hurt and to make sure it never happened again, I built a wall all around me. As time went on, the wall got larger and so did I. I don't know when I got to my top weight of 330 pounds. It just seemed to be there one day. I never got on the scale unless I was at a doctor's office and they made me do it. I hated the scale and somehow always envisioned myself as not being as large as I was. Talk about denial!

In January, 2005, I had a life changing experience. I caught a virus from a co-worker. I was being treated for three weeks for bronchitis. When I returned to my doctor's office for the third time, and still feeling no better despite the antibiotics I was taking, I had to see a different doctor as mine was not in that day. He decided that a chest x-ray was in order and when the results came back, the x-ray showed that I had an enlarged heart. I was sent to a cardiologist and in one day I went from having bronchitis to having severe congestive heart failure.

To say the least, this totally changed my life. I had to retire, which left me with a lot of time on my hands. I tried to use it wisely. I caught up on all the books I'd always wanted to read and never had the time, and I had a lot of time to do some soul searching. I'm happy to say that I'm much better health wise. When I first got sick, I couldn't even walk from my apartment to my mailbox. I can now go for nice walks around my apartment complex.

During all of this, I was grateful that my cardiologist didn't push me to lose weight. Maybe he knew that this had to be my decision. In August, I made that decision.  I don't know why it happened, but it did. I was cleaning my apartment as a friend was coming to stay for a few days, and I suddenly realized that there was a correlation between the clutter in my apartment and my weight. I refer to this as my personal epiphany.

I started journaling about all of this and I'm going to be adding to this page from time to time. People have started asking for my advice on weight loss. So I've put together a sort of list of things to do so that you can be successful. They may sound obvious, but sometimes we have to be hit over the head before we realize that there are things that we need to do.  Are you ready to do this?  If you answered "Yes", click on the Yes button!