My Cushioned Middle

Hello to all those fellow dieters of doom, food plan fools and denizens of Oh-Be-City!
I've decided to broaden my use of bandwidth by bouncing off a blog about my battle with the belly.
My midsection has been, at various times, huge and zeppelin-like (especially when I was pregnant and seemed to be providing a heated swimming pool the size of Lake Michigan for my tiny 3.5 pound baby), taut and toned for (only) two years, and now, compact and cushioned as I bloom into the comfort of middle age (I'll be 47 in December).
A bit of background:
I was a big baby, and my mother loved my pulcitrudinous pudge, as she was always skinny in an era when curves reined supreme, ala Marilyn Monroe.
Inevitably, I was a fat teenager in an era when skinny women with small breasts and hips reigned supreme, ala Farah Faucett (the biggest thing on her was her teeth and hair).
But I was consigned to taking cortisone, a steroid, for most of my childhood, because I was allergic to everything that makes Iowa a cornucopia of corn, beef, pork and soybeans. So I had no satiety signals, thanks to steroids, to tell my brain when to stop eating, and a mother who loved to bake sweets. (oddly enough, I recently met the grandson of the Nobel prize-winning Dr Kendall, the man who invented cortisone, whom I soundly cursed many times during my childhood. Yet I wouldn't have survived without cortisone, as my asthma and allergies were severe. So I suppose, in retrospect, I should have thanked the man, too).
During my college years in Dubuque, Iowa, my asthma seemed to abate enough that I was able to stay off corisone, and I lost enough weight (after hiking up hills to get to the campus from my apartment) that I wore a size 14, down from a size 28. I moved to Cambridge, MA to start graduate school, and the stress of those years in a big city with no friends, family or support took their toll, and I gained weight again, especially after moving to Florida after graduating with a masters degree, and trying to find work.
As senior editor of a Florida lifestyle magazine, I was always on the go, eating whatever I could get my hands on and assuming I'd be a larger person for the rest of my life. However, fate, as they say, stepped in, in the person of Sharlene Powell of Women At Large, Inc., a Yakima-based exercise salon franchise. Women at Large specialized in low impact aerobics taught by larger women specifically for big women to help them get in shape and be healthy, no matter how big they were. I was interviewing the owner of the new Largo based Women at Large and talking to franchise owner Powell when she suggested I join Women at Large. I protested that I had asthma, and wasn't usually able to run around. She assured me that I could do this kind of low impact exercise, and offered me a week of free classes. One year later, (after working out there 3 times a week) I'd lost 100-plus pounds and was looking fit and fine! I was a size 10-12, and my measurements were 36-25-36. I had curves in all the right places, but I was toned and fit everywhere, too. I met and started dating my husband, and, once Women at Large closed and the job market dried up, we drove diagonally across the US to get to Seattle in 1991. I found that without exercise, I began to gain weight again, and my sweet tooth came back full force. I was a size 18 when we got here, and I progressed up sizes in the next 16 years until 2006, when I was back to my pregnancy weight of 269-270. (During the preceding years, I was frustrated by the lack of decent exercise facilities in Seattle, until I'd begun working out at a great little health club in Ballard. Then I got pregnant unexpectedly, and was told I could not exercise because of my age and chance of developing preclampsia.) Once my son Nick turned two, though, and we'd moved to Maple Valley, I was ready to get back into an exercise regime. My opportunity didn't come until 2006, however, when my husband gave me a membership to the wonderful Work It Out Womens Fitness salon in Maple Valley. I began taking balls and weights classes and eventually worked up the courage to start their six-week-long boot camp this past summer. I've lost 40 pounds since last December, and I've only got 60 more to go to reach my goal, which is modest. However, twenty years after I'd lost that initial 100 pounds, I notice it's much harder to lose weight with exercise alone. I've had to modify my diet considerably, give up sugar, and work out 5 times a week. I feel much healthier and I know I look better, but I am still an "apple" whose main weight sticks right around my trunk. I feel like my legs and hips and rump are looking great, but my belly is still upholstered with avoirdupois.
So this will be my account of the second half of my healthy weight loss journey, all the way to 170 pounds. Bear with me, fellow bellies. This may take awhile, but I am nothing if not stubborn.