I am finishing up a really good book. It is called "The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl". It is about an Australian woman who loses a lot of weight, like 175 pounds. It has been inspirational for me, but also discouraging for me. I don't know how it can be both at the same time, but it is. I think I have done a better job of eating well since I started reading it. However, it has also served to remind me how little progress I seem to be making. I have been stuck at the same weight for 9 months. I have done lots of different things to get the scale moving and it just won't budge. In July, I got a gym membership and started going to the gym regularly. I met with a personal trainer who told me I wasn't eating enough. I started eating more, making sure it is healthy, along with exercising 6 days a week. I gained 5 pounds in the first month. Since then, I have lost that 5 pounds plus 2 additional pounds, but that still puts me only1 pound lighter than I was in February. I'm sure not going to get very far by losing 1 pound every 9 months. I have now cut out most of the sugar from my diet, although there wasn't that much sugar in my diet to begin with. I have been obsessively following the WW program, working out religiously, except for the 10 days I was sick, and drinking lots of water and it just isn't working. This week, I am finding that I am getting scared to even eat. Every time I go to eat something, I fret over the calories and points in it. I don't eat anything until my stomach is growling because I want to make sure I am truly hungry before I eat and that I am not eating out of boredom, stress or any other emotional reason. I was becoming obsessed with the scale, so I stopped weighing in at WW, but now I keep getting on the scale at home. I didn't weigh at all for almost 3 weeks. I got on the scale this morning and my weight is the SAME!!! How can it be the same? I am beginning to think the only way I am going to lose weight is to just stop eating. It's not like I am getting close to my goal weight so my body is holding on to the little bit of fat I have left. No, I have a lot of fat left. I still have 65 pounds to be at the max weight my doctor recommended and 80 pounds to lose to be at the max weight that WW says I need to be. With 80 pounds to lose, my body should be willingly getting rid of the extra fat. I talked to my neurologist and endocrinologist about it and they ordered a thyroid test. I had that drawn last week. My neuro also wonders if my migraine preventative medication may be slowing my metabolism, so we are weaning off the beta blocker to see if that will get my metabolism going. When I exercise, I can't get my heart rate out of the 90's because of the medication, but just decreasing the dose has been helping that. I was able to get my heart rate up to 105 yesterday. I am really hoping that this helps. I just don't know what else to do. Giving up is not an option. Maybe I'll get a lap band or bariatric surgery. That isn't my first choice, but neither is staying fat. I'm tired of feeling like a blob.

Aside from my weight loss woes, life is going pretty good. Things are status quo around the house. The boys keep me busy with home schooling, occupational therapy, scouts, cooking classes and just being boys. Rachael's schedule is really busy, but it doesn't effect me nearly as much now that she can drive herself. She is going to have some great opportunities with dance this year. The Tapestry Dance Company (the professional dance company at the studio where she takes classes) is going to involve Visions in Rhythm in a few of their professional shows this year. This means she is going to be dancing at the Long Center and people will actually be paying to see the dances. They are going to be doing a big Christmas show that showcases performers from all over the central Texas area. They are getting to re-do some of the professional companies dances from over the past 20 years. This is all to celebrate Tapestry's 20th anniversary. She is excited about all of these opportunities she is getting. She is doing fairly well with her college classes, but we have completely fallen down on keeping up with her high school home school classes. She just has so much work that she needs to do for her 2 classes that I hate to add more work onto her. We really need to work on math more t hough so she can be ready for the SAT. I think we will work on a bunch of math in between ACC semesters.