Refuse To Regain

Paging Stuart Smalley…

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering Barbara will be home from Argentina soon, but in the meantime, here’s another one of my musings. It struck me yesterday, as I was worrying myself to near nail-biting, that just because I lost weight, I didn’t lose my core insecurities. I know I’ve preached over and over again here on this blog and elsewhere that losing weight doesn’t solve our problems, but once in awhile I forget. OK, so a lot of times I forget. Or... Read more →

Now vs. Then

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering Continuing on with my one-woman show while Barbara’s in Argentina (I’m trying not to think about it being summer there as we face 6-10 inches of snow and ice in the next 24 hours), I thought I’d start a conversation with you about what you do now that you didn’t or couldn’t do before you lost or started to lose weight. After reading Lyn’s blog entry, “What I Missed,” over at Escape From Obesity, I started thinking... Read more →

Skinny Jeans

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering I’ve noticed an evolutionary shift in my attitude toward clothing over the last several years. When I was morbidly obese, clothing’s only function was to hide me, an impossible task given my 47-inch waistline and 57-inch hips. Back then, I shopped online and hoped for the best. But as I got smaller, I started to view clothing as less functional and more of an extension of my personality. I even dared to dress in things beyond my... Read more →

Still Flinching After All These Years

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering My husband and I adopted our dog Jake 9 years ago from a shelter. He was a stray 2-year-old, pure-bred Golden Retriever who befriended by some college guys working at the local beer distributer. They nicknamed him “Beer Dog.” Jake had kennel cough and was losing his hair. He was hyper, underweight, and smelled bad. He wasn’t neutered. Our vet put him on a bunch of medications and removed his manly parts, then Larry and I started... Read more →

Stand and Deliver

By Barbara Berkeley We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle Long, long ago, in that distant time period before blogging, a food writer for our local newspaper wrote a first-of-the-year column. Seems that he’d gained quite a bit of weight as a result of all that dining and reviewing and he was determined to take it off. There was the usual worry about health issues and the obligate promise to stay... Read more →

Doctor Phobia - Lynn's Response

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering When I weighed 139 pounds for five minutes back in 1991, a doctor told me to lose weight. I was pretty disheartened with his diagnosis, especially since I’d just lost 50 pounds and was feeling really good about myself. So what did I do? Did I step back and look realistically at the situation? Assess what I thought was best for me in light of what he thought was best for me? Nope. I tried for a... Read more →

Doctor-Phobia: Barbara Responds

By Barbara Berkeley I’m trying to remember just when it was that people started to develop doctor-phobia. When I was a kid, my doctor was someone who was slightly scary, but mostly because he was from a different social class. He had nice suits, looked rotundly well-fed, and drove a Cadillac. Doctors were different then. They played golf and were off on Wednesdays, while our fathers worked in stores, factories and offices and always seemed short of cash. On the... Read more →

Questions From Readers to Readers: Going to the Doctor

Time once again to ask you to answer a question for a reader. This month’s Questions from Readers to Readers comes from Trixie who actually posted this question in a blog I’d written over on personal weight site, Lynn’s Weigh, about a doctor who told his patients he hoped they gained weight over the holidays! Insane. Anyway, Trixie wrote: “(T)his post makes me even more nervous to go back to the doctor. I honestly haven't been to a physician in... Read more →

A Year of Change

By Barbara Berkeley Arguably, the idea of change was the most prominent theme of 2008. As politicians on both the right and left recited the change mantra, a country that had become disenchanted with the status quo responded. In life, as in politics, it’s all too easy to let things go unexamined. In order to make progress, we’ve all got to take stock periodically and – like cleaning out our closets – we need to throw out the stuff that... Read more →

"After the happy ending" - A Guest Blog by "DietGirl" Shauna Reid

Refuse To Regain is honored to be a part of Shauna Reid's virtual book tour! She blogs at DietGirl and "The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl" was just released in the U.S. ---------------------------- "After The Happy Ending" My first year of maintenance was easy. I think I cruised through on euphoria alone. Every day in my new body was an adventure - I rejoiced in my new clothes, new fitness and new ability to fit inside bathtubs. Later that year I... Read more →