Where Everybody Knows Our Name

Shrek and I live in Worcester, Massachusetts. We have an assortment of restaurants just like most other cities. What makes a restaurant a favorite stopping place? The neighborhood place to go, the watering hole of choice? I can't answer for everyone else only myself. It is many factors. Quality and variety along with quantity of dish offered and decent prices make my top ten. Most importantly though is what I call the "it" factor. Most places Shrek and I go just don't have their finger on "it". The thing that makes their place The Place. The "it" is involvement with your clientele. Be in touch with what they need and want, success will follow. Joey's Bar and Grill located at 242 Mill Street in Worcester has "it". Everybody at Joey's knows our names. From the night hostess to the kitchen staff and waitresses.

Shrek and I frequent Joey's every week. Thursday nights to be exact. Our seating of choice; the bar. A favorite of mine to chat with the bar keep and watch the assortment of folks enter in search of a good nosh and some atmosphere. On Thursdays our bartender is Erika. She always greets Shrek and me by name and learned our bar orders by our second visit. She is very pleasant and an easy conversationalist.

I started my weight loss journey with the idea that I would have to give up things in order to achieve my goals. I was positive going out to restaurants was one of those things I would have to learn to live without. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Could I order a salad with my meal instead of fries? Would it be okay to order the Joey's favorite salad with romaine lettuce instead of iceberg? Would it be possible to have honey mustard instead of mayo on my grilled chicken sandwich? I asked fully expecting to be told no. Sure thing was the first response with a smile. I asked for and got what I wanted. How cool. A restaurant willing to go the extra mile to make me a return customer. I have been returning ever since.

I look forward to going out to eat at Joey's every week. I feel that Joey's helps me to stay focused and on track. I have learned to have ordering confidence here, to be comfortable with asking if I can make a substitution because I need a healthier choice. Thank you for making me feel like I am your first priority.

Name Change... I think I have earned it.

To keep up with current events in my life I have tweaked the title page a little. I will still refer to this as Large Marge Chronicles. I feel funny calling myself Large Marge now because well ,while my attitude is larger than life my pant size is not. That just sounds so cool. It amazes me to no end that I have come this far. I must make sure that I stay focused and not get lost or caught up in the euphoria of success. There is still quite a way for me to go before I reach goal. Sometimes it is tough for me not to get ahead of myself. I forget what it is that I am trying to accomplish.

Looking Ahead to Goal

In all the time that I have been posting about my weight loss journey I have never talked about failing. How I would write about and handle it never crossed my thoughts. I am in no way, shape or form perfect. I am human with realtime emotions that sometimes betray me. I worry. All the time. It is one of my traits that I despise but I have come to accept it as a part of what makes the bigger picture of me work. All the while I have been authoring this blog I have worried. Worried that someone would think that I have found the secret path to skinnyland and that I would make it unscathed. Surprise ! Not true. I stumble. I fall. Sometimes I come dangerously close to throwing my hands up in the air, declaring myself finished with WW and eating an entire bucket of extra crispy!!! I think about failing on purpose. I believe that if I allow myself to fail it could mean the end of my life.

Failing is not what I really want. I find that every single time I am not completely honest with myself about how I feel or how someone or a situatuion makes me feel I overeat. I guess I haven't spent much time discussing failure because I don't want to fail. I promised myself that this time was for me. That this time around it would be the last time for me. I try to have fun along my way. Sometimes I let my emotions and daily problems eat at me and so in turn I eat. To my credit I right my canoe and paddle on.

I worry that my journey has changed me in ways that I am not ready for. I worry somehow I am not going to be able to maintain my weight loss or that my hubby will suddenly not love me anymore because I am not the same girl he married. My mother used to say that I could "what if" myself to death...I drive myself crazy. I can only imagine what effect I have on others.

It is tough being honest with myself. I have not been ready to move toward goal. I have been afraid of the unknown factor...me. Can I do it? Do I want to do it? I haven't been in normal sizes since I was fifteen years old. I need to teach myself to relax. I am so used to letting myself down that I don't know how to accept that I have picked myself up. I have reached the critical part of my journey, the part where I live happily ever after if I will just let myself get there. I find myself uncertain as to how to proceed. I am guessing by putting one foot in front of the other until I am there.

The Last Stretch of Road

I find myself along that last stretch of road. I feel like I am running the Boston Marathon and heartbreak hill rolls out in front of me. The wind is blowing in my face instead of at my back and I must tell you that I am very tired. I am at that point; do I press on, push myself to go on and finish the race or do I pull over and catch my breath?

I have struggled all week with this. I need to be at maintenance. I am getting nervous about the "losing points"to keep losing weight concept. As it is right now I am hungry and let me tell you there just are not that many one point food items in the world. I have no idea how I am going to make it over that next rise in the road but I will not give up. I will make my goal ! I do not care how long it takes me. I will make it. So tighten those seatbelts and keep your hands inside the ride!

Forgive, move on

I did something this past week that I was sure I would never be able to do...I forgave someone who hurt me to my core. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I wanted to hang onto this hatred. Real bright idea, right? I am sure you know, my anger and resentment sat on my soul like an elephant in high heels. I lied to myself about how comfortable I was with this elephant stepping all over my soul. It is always easier to believe a lie you tell yourself, if you just repeat the lie enough. I was doing fine...but it was starting to keep me up at night. I would toss and turn as that damned elephant's heels would poke me in the ribs or jab me in the head or maybe that is why my butt hurts me. It is not from weight loss but from that stupid pachyderm.

I like to think that my parents did a decent job raising me. I am a good person. I have been through a lot in my life (and really who hasn't?). Listen, if life didn't throw rocks at you you wouldn't learn to catch or field. I made a promise to myself that I would actively work on the issues that fueled my need to feed. I feel that to date I have been doing a fairly decent job of it. I want to continue on my journey without unnecessary burdens. I needed to make peace with this issue and the person who I was angry with before I found myself using food to cope with the stress.


Never forget that when you say something or you do something to someone the incident may become muted with time and the words may lose their power but how you made that person feel never goes away. A paraphrase from Maya Angelou...thank you Miss Angelou. I needed to find a place within myself to forget how small and damaged this person made me feel. It is amazing how in the span of a few words a person can either build you up or shred you. I hung onto my anger in the hope that someday I could return "the favor" and make this same person feel as small and as damaged as she had made me feel. Funny but it seems that life did that for me.


Never for a moment assume that you know someone else's pain because you don't.


I am handling the situation in the best way I can. I sort of spoke my piece to this person and as of now we are at peace. Only time will lead this story to its ultimate conclusion whatever that may be. Learn by example. Forgive, move on...that's what my mom would have done. I am learning.

My Posse?

Just thought I'd drop a couple of lines about the growth of my posse at WW. It seems that more than a few people I know have decided to join WW. Yippee!! Not-so-LargeMarge jumping up and down!!! Most of these peeps also go to the same meeting I attend. On some levels it is so flippin' cool that I have inspired a few folks to take positive action to change their destiny. On other levels I have never felt so uncomfortable and sort of unnerved.

I still stumble. I even fall but don't we all? I am just done with failing. I am fighting harder to win. I am working on being proactive instead of reactive. I am learning to do other things with the emotions that helped me to become the LargeMarge I once pushed around. I am the only one who made me fat. The only person who ever "force fed" me was...? yeah, that would be me. I think that somewhere along this journey I figured out that I needed to accept responsibility for my bad choices.

Don't misunderstand me... I just don't want to let anyone down; myself included. I am a little worried that you lovely folks, and I mean this in a positive way, think that I have all the answers. You would be categorically wrong! I hope that my success has given you enough faith in your OWN abilities to forge on and drop the pounds that keep you from being the best version of yourself. I gladly and willingly will assist in any way I can. Even if it is too just hold your hand and be as supportive as you have always been with me friend.

To those who have joined me, Welcome. The road is long and sometimes fraught with unknown dangers but fear not for we are not alone. We have each other and together we can do great things. Look forward to the challenges! They will make impressive stories for when we are old.

One Year

I did it ! I managed to go to WW for a full year. In that time I have lost 122.6 pounds. I can proudly say that I have adopted a new way of thinking about food, about myself and about how I want to live. I am not always successful with my choices which shows at the scale. Now I try to learn from those experiences and think of them as stepping stones not as roadblocks. I used to be a very negative person and it showed itself in my appearance.

I have taught myself to stop and think before I eat something. I ask myself am I feeding myself or am I feeding a feeling. I am an emotional eater. A trick I learned from my mother. I never allowed myself to entertain the thought that I could learn to not self medicate with food. Thinking about that now I realize that I never gave myself a chance. I gave up running the race before I left the starting block.

Why me? my favorite cry. Why me? Why me? Well, why NOT me? It is mind boggling to me that I spent so much time talking bad about myself to myself. I don't know if I think it is more amusing to me or saddening that I used to believe all the crap I told myself. If I had only learned my worth earlier in life. Then again if I hadn't been on this journey I might not have learned so much about myself. I am a power to be reckoned with. I can achieve great things if I am willing to put in the time and effort to attain the things I want. I proved this to myself. The possibilties are endless. Just believe.

I have not told my leader yet but I think I want my lifetime goal to be 165 pounds. I will have to get a note from my doctor as this weight is a good 10 pounds heavier than WW wants me to maintain but I am not a 20's something anymore and hubby loves me just as I am. I have no need to be a hard body I just wish to be comfortable in my own skin.