How I Got Here and Where I am Going

If you knew me in high school you knew the me that loved to eat junk food and sneak down the hill at lunch time to smoke cigarettes. This is where the bad habits began. Although I grew up in a very healthy vegetarian home, when I moved out to be an adult with my own family I unfortunately was not as health conscious as my mother (or nearly as good a cook!!). Our meals consisted mostly of frozen microwaved dinners, delivery pizza or fast food. Things only got worse when I decided that it was a good idea to get a part time job at Dairy Queen. At this point of my life I was a 23 year old college student and mother of a four year old. I was about ten pounds overweight at this time. Being just ten pounds overweight is pretty easy to ignore, especially if it means you don't have to stop eating the things you love or change any of your other unhealthy eating habits. Choosing to work at Dairy Queen was an awful decision. I would work 3 to 4 nights a week and my son and boyfriend would come and visit me during my lunch and we would eat. My favorite meal to eat during my lunch was the chicken basket. Do you know how many calories are in the Dairy Queen Chicken Basket? Neither did I, nor did I care at the time. After eating we would get dessert because it was Dairy Queen and you can't not enjoy a tasty treat there can you?? My favorite was the Brownie Earthquake. Any guesses on how many calories were in that? I never gave it any consideration. All I thought about was how good it tasted. After getting off work I would often bring home dinner, which was almost always a Crispy Chicken Sandwich for me, and blizzards for everyone. Below are the nutrition facts for the Chicken Basket (left) and the Brownie Earthquake (right).

Below are the nutrition facts for the Crispy Chicken Sandwich (left) and the Oreo Blizzard (Right).

Yep that is 3300 calories and it doesn't even include french fries, soda my breakfast and any snacks I may have had. Doing this 3 to 4 times a week every week for half a year brought me to an all time high weight for me. As a teenager and young adult I was between 125 pounds and 135 pounds. My Dairy Queen binge brought me up to 159 pounds. It happened very fast and I didn't really even notice what was happening until it was too late. Carrying around this extra weight caused me to be very unhappy. I would be uncomfortable in just about any social situation and felt that if I could just lose weight I could be happy and comfortable again. I would think about my weight pretty much every minute of every day. I hated being overweight but I was not ready to do anything about it. This was mostly because I didn't know where to begin. And I would love to say that not knowing what to do to correct the problem was my only obstacle but it would be a lie. I liked eating and I was too lazy to make any changes. I tried working out in the college gym and hated it. Do you know who works out at the gym? Physically fit people who know what they are doing with the weights and machines. I felt so incredibly out of place and completely visible that these visits to the gym were miserable and of course didn't last. So I decided that there was nothing that could be done about it. I settled into wearing giant sweatshirts, no matter what the weather, all year round. This was a little problematic during the summer but I was determined to hide myself.

Here is a picture of me during this time

And another where I am actually not wearing a sweatshirt

And just one more

Even after all of the time that has past since then I am still very embarrassed about how out of control I let my weight get. These pictures were not easy to put up.

I continued this way for three years. I was miserable but so far unable to change. Then one day I caught a really bad cold. It drug on and it was getting in the way of my classes so I decided to visit student health services. This wasn't supposed to be a big deal, just get some medicine and go back to class. When the nurse came to take my temperature and blood pressure I had no idea my life was about to change. The nurse said that my blood pressure was pre-hypertensive which was obviously not where I wanted it to be. She had me come back many times to keep and eye on it. These visits were terrifying to me. Even as an over weight smoker I had thought that I was relatively healthy. I was only 26 years old and didn't think that blood pressure was something I should be thinking about. It became very important to me to fix this. I decided to try Curves which is a gym made just for women. It was also just one block from our apartment which was really nice. This workout environment sounded much more inviting than the college gym. I wanted very much to lose the weight and to be healthy but I had little faith that I would be able to stick to any sort of exercise program as I had failed at this many times in the past. Along with my membership to Curves I also got a book that was sort of a guide to getting healthy along with a meal planner. I went to curves every day after initially joining the gym. This wasn't too difficult as it was only a half hour (sometimes I would stay an hour if I was feeling extra motivated). The weight started to come off immediately. I lost around 2 to 3 pounds every week. It didn't take long for me to decide that if it was going to work so well why would I quit going. I was headed exactly where I wanted to be. The second month I was at Curves I entered a "biggest loser" contest. I didn't think much of it at the time, there were so many others participating that I didn't really think that I had a chance. I did win though, losing 12 pounds as well as 11 inches (that is a lot of inches!). I followed the diet pretty much perfectly during this time and by the fourth month I had lost 34 pounds and was right where I wanted to be. My blood pressure at this point was right where it was supposed to be. I enjoyed my first summer in 4 years!

Here I am enjoying the summer

I kept the weight off and like I had thought I would be, I was much happier.

Keeping the weight off was simple, I ate the right foods and went to Curves at least five days a week. This worked for a long time. In August of 2009 (a year after losing the weight) I quit smoking. A month later I began running. This was very difficult for me at first because I had been a smoker for 16 years. I stuck with it though and before I knew it I had incorporated it into my regular exercise routine. I started to enjoy it and even participated in a few races.

And even won first place in my age division in the Birch Bay Road Race (Pretty proud of that!)

I ran into a problem in 2010 though. At this time I was also feeling a little invincible when it came to my weight and it was holiday time. I love to bake and make sweets. Usually I will only eat one or make them for other people but this year was different. I began making fudge for Thanksgiving and then some truffles, then came the Christmas cookies...starting the day after Thanksgiving of course! That was the first year that I decided that I could eat whatever I wanted as long as I was still going to the gym. Turns out I was wrong. In just a couple months I had gained ten pounds. I tried for the next year and a half to lose that ten pounds. There was always something getting in the way though. Somewhere we were going, people we were seeing...lots of excuses to eat poorly and exercise less. I managed to maintain my weight which caused me to feel stuck. Another problem I had come across was that I had become bored with Curves. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with Curves. I loved working out in their gym and the program worked really well for me it just became a problem for me that it was always the same!

In December of 2011 my boyfriend and I joined a gym together. I was so emotional about quitting curves that I actually cried in the parking lot after going in and cancelling my membership! I moved on though and decided to give Bayside Fitness a try. I was very nervous in the beginning. Gyms can be pretty intimidating when you are unsure what you are doing. For the first few weeks I would work out on my own, sticking to the area of the gym where the machines were rather than the free weights. This was mostly because I had no idea what to do with the free weights and felt a little embarrassed when I tried to figure it out. Fortunately my boyfriend started working out during his lunch break so he was able to teach me what to do and push me to move away from my comfort zone! After a few months at this gym I made the decision to take a new Cardio Kickboxing class that they were offering. This was really a big step out of my comfort zone as I had never taken any fitness classes and if you've met me you know I am lacking coordination just a little! Turns out I love it...even if my left and right still get mixed up during class!

At this point I lift weights five days a week, do a minimum of thirty minutes of cardio at least four days a week and take 2 one hour long cardio kickboxing classes a week. Since January I have lost 10.6 pounds. This might not sound like too much for that amount of time but I have gotten a lot stronger as well meaning that my muscle mass has increased and as we all know...muscle weighs more that fat! I would like to lose about 5-10 more pounds...we'll see. The main obstacle that I have lately is constant weekend trips. As you all know, it is difficult to make healthy decisions when traveling. Because of this I lose weight during the week and then weigh in on Monday a bit heavier and have to lose it all over again. I am not worried though because my weekends away are finally coming to an end (finally after 2 months...it will be good to be home for a change!!).

Here I am now

I am a tracker. I track my exercise, my weight and my body fat. I do this almost obsessively. I have two graphs that I keep track of weight loss on. Why two graphs? Just cause I like tracking things, I like seeing my progress. One graph begins in December 2010 and the other begins after I made some changes to the way I am eating. I track everything I eat (except on the weekends when we are gone because that would just be too upsetting!). I count not only calories but fat, carbohydrates and protein and I keep an eye on my sodium. I eat between 1200 and 1500 calories a day (this is less than half the calories I had been consuming just from Dairy Queen!!) and limit myself to two cups of coffee. I avoid processed foods and simple sugars almost completely. I do treat myself to a small piece of dark chocolate every day, which of course I track in my meal planning. If I enjoy a glass of wine, I compensate for it by not eating those calories. This makes that glass of wine much less appealing than it used to be! I have not determined how exactly I should be eating and am currently playing with the numbers a little. Before I changed my diet in 2008 I suffered frequent headaches and almost constant heartburn. I could go through a roll of tums in a day (sometimes two)...easily. When I changed my eating habits the headaches and heartburn went away completely as did the weight. The problem with the way I was eating on the curves plan was that the amount of carbohydrates I was allowing myself was a little low and the protein amount was extremely hard to consume. I feel like a diet should be a little more balanced than that so I am working on it.

So there is the story of how I got to this place in my life and why exercise and being healthy are so important to me. I hope that I can be an inspiration to others. If I can get healthy, fit and happy so can you!