It's been said that doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different result is insanity. I believe it's true when it comes to dieting.

Now, I have to be honest...although I've spent far more of my adult years overweight, I have not tried every fad diet out there. I have lost a significant amount of weight twice before: 60+ pounds in 1999, and 65+ pounds in 2006.

Obviously, I am here dieting for a reason. I slipped off the good habits and put the weight back on. I like to pat myself on the back that both times I kept the weight off until I got pregnant with baby #3 and baby #4 respectively, each just over a year after losing the weight.

*giggles*

I must look very good when I'm skinny!

Okay, now seriously, that was not the point. The point was that I hit some trouble spots maintaining my weight loss. The first time, the problem was that I never learned anything about nutrition and cooking healthly balanced meals at all. I took phentermine, which is an appetite suppressant. I lost 15 pounds a month, but I hardly ate. I worked out 2-3 hours a day while my two little ones napped. Not exactly what you could call a replicable situation for very long.

The second time, I learned more about nutrition and accountability. I learned about how to eat out without going crazy in high fat, high sugar, low nutrition foods. I learned that this "whole food" and this "whole food" are good while highly processed foods are bad. But there always remained this disconnect for me in how I ate. It felt like I was always piecing together snacks to create a "meal". When I achieved my goal weight, I just couldn't and didn't see myself eating like that for a lifetime. And...surprise, surprise...I didn't and I put every ounce and pound (plus a few extras I found along the way) back on.

I've chosen the alli diet plan to help me lose weight. I am having more knee pain than I would like, and I know that my weight is to blame. But I keep plugging along with the change in my diet, the increase of physical activity knowing that there is only one way to make my health, my joints, my lifestyle better--stick with it...for life.

And this is where it is SO different for me this time. As I began this change, I identified it as being a permanent state. This is my last diet. I will maintain because I know what fat looks like, I know how it feels emotionally and physically, and because I also know what healthy looks like and feels. I CHOOSE healthy. I WANT healthy. I CONTROL the choices that will lead me back to good health and keep me there.

And knowing these things, I really hit a wall last week. I felt once again that I was piecing snacks together to create odd, disjointed meals. And I started to panic. I kept eating that way because I want to fit in my skinny jeans sooooo sooooo badly, but I knew that I needed to learn how to make real meals for my whole family that were healthy.

I didn't grow up in a household where I was taught to cook much. And when I started to cook as an adult, we had a limited budget and ate the cheaper highly processed foods. I never learned how to cook healthy meals. And I longed for the ability to learn to cook healthy meals for my whole family. I mean, I think there should be a required high school or college class for this because it seems so foreign to me.

I hear so many women tell of cooking for their whole family and then making a separate meal for themselves. This seems a little unnecessary and unreal to me. First of all, I lack the time and energy to cook two meals each evening. Second, if I have been modeling poor eating habits for my children, I need to teach them new ones as I learn them too. It is essential for my children to look at food in healthy realistic ways.

Enter a conversation with my 7-year-old son about having to eat what I cook. Sigh. I explained it to him in boy terms. Inside our bodies, there are all those organs. They work together to keep us alive and healthy. It's like our engine. I asked him to reason taking his dad's car to the mechanic for an oil change and having dirty old oil put into it. He knew that was silly, but he didn't realize that eating high sugar foods, greasy high-fat foods was exactly the same thing for his body. And then I had to be real with him. I told him that he didn't want to be fat when he grows up. (He loved the attention I got when I lost all the weight several years ago...he's an attention-getter...) I asked him if he wanted me to be able to play outside with them again. I asked him if he wants to play with his kids like that someday. He answered with a resounding, "YES." So I reasoned with him that he also had to change how he eats now. Before he blows up his internal car engine.

So while longing for a way to learn to cook for the whole family true healthy "meals", I stumbled upon a great cookbook. I hate to appear to be endorsing a product, because that is not my intent. But, if you are feeling inadequate when it comes to preparing a healthy meal for your whole family, I just have to suggest you check out this book: Biggest Loser Family Cookbook. Unlike the earlier cookbook, almost all of the recipes are in family of four format, not individual servings. The meals are very yummy, and they are budget friendly too. I feel like I have found the cooking class I was looking for!

My next weigh-in is coming up, and I'm not dreading it. I can't "weight" to see how much I've lost...