In a nutshell I'm hoping this blog will help me. Mainly I want to focus this blog on my weight loss journey. As much as I'd love to say, hey this is the old story of my weight loss, I can't. My journey started in May of 2010 and it is still going. Me and my now husband had gotten engaged in December of 2009 and by May I was ready to really commit to weight loss and a full lifestyle change. As embarrassing as this is to admit to well, anyone at my high back in 2010 I weighed in at 220 pounds.
I can't find my original "before" pictures. I probably deleted them, but the shot on the left is probably from sometime in June 2010 and the right is probably somewhere around June or May of 2011. The right is close to my all time low.
From May 2010 until September 2011 I did pretty good, lost a little over 30 pounds, learned to run (BIG supporter of the Couch to 5k program!), stuck to eating healthy and was happy with where my body was going. I accomplished this through calorie counting and exercise. That sounds like it was a breeze. It was not. It was hard and I struggled a lot. Unfortunately like many new wives who struggled with weight loss, I got a little lazy and over indulgent after the wedding. Starting right away on our honeymoon!
The combination of eating foods I shouldn't have, and larger portions than I should have, as well as becoming very lax in my exercise routine got me back up to about 200 pounds. I managed to run my first ever 5k in October 2011, came in 4th from last but I finished! I can't remember my exact time but it was close to 43 minutes. This was a huge accomplishment for a person who in April HATED running and never thought she could run for 2 minutes straight, let a lone for 43!
To throw one more complication into my life right before Halloween 2011 I was diagnosed with either celiacs disease or a gluten allergy. My doctor didn't do any formal testing, so I don't know which it is exactly, but either way I have been eating gluten free (with some trial and error) since then. Since the 5k I had started to really get back into the groove of things. Exercising again, not as much as I should have been, but any exercise is better than no exercise. I had also gotten my eating back under control. The gluten free issue definitely threw that off for a while, well, more than a while. I thought I was doing well based on my calorie counting but I wasn't really losing much weight.
Fast forward to the weekend after Thanksgiving 2011. Add two herniated discs that took me out of work for 2 weeks solid and stopped basically all exercise for 2 months. This came quite possibly at the worst time of the year too, right before the holidays!
After all this was said and done we're in mid March 2012. I'm disgusted with myself inside and out. I've been eating poorly, not exercising, and that little voice inside my head was convinced that I was a total failure and could never ever really lose weight and be fit and healthy. That all the goals and milestones I had achieved were garbage as I'd basically wiped out all my previous weight loss and general fitness level. Basically I was worthless to myself. Now the rational side of my brain knows that self worth isn't based on a dress size or how long you can run for, but that didn't stop the irrational side from dominating my thoughts.
I had been seeing a lot of commercials for Weight Watchers on TV. I had never understood why people paid money to what I thought was basically the same thing as counting calories. But since that wasn't working for me with or without exercise I started to ask around about it. They had a deal where you could sign up and pay for 3 months for the online membership and the start up fee was waived. After talking to my beloved hubby we decided that it was worth a shot if all it cost was about $50 for 3 months. Worst case I don't keep the membership and we are out less than $20 a month for 3 months.
Well let me tell you, I am SO glad we decided to "waste" the $50. I am now in the beginning of week 11 and I've lost 14.6 pounds and a total of 8 inches (I started the measurements on April 18)! I started on March 18th at a weight of 215.4 pounds. My current stats are as follows:
Weight: 200.8 pounds
Height: 5' 7"
Dress Size: 12-14 (oh women's clothing manufacturers and your varied sizing)
This picture is the most current picture I have of myself. This was taken on Saturday. I'll take some progress pictures tomorrow after my zumba class.
I am very pleased with how WW works. It really isn't just counting calories like I thought. I feel like I have so much more flexibility than when I was trying to hit 1200 or 1400 or whatever amount of calories I was aiming for. I really can see why my "low cal" gluten free diet wasn't working. While I may have been eating fewer calories than I do now on an average day (I'm still tracking my calories with My Fitness Pal even though I go by my WW points now) I wasn't eating the right kind of calories. Gluten free is hard. I was eating a lot of foods from the gluten free aisle because I was "safe" with them. However prepackaged gluten free versions of normal food are not really that good for you. WW has forced me to figure out how to eat healthy and gluten free at the same time. And you know what, Jennifer Hudson is right. It works!
Now that you know all that (that is if anyone is reading this!) a few more points before I conclude this massive first ever blog post. First, lets talk about my goals. I'm just going to list them in no particular order.
1. Lose enough weight that I am comfortable with how I look. I put a goal of 170 pounds in WW, but when I get there I'll decide if I like what I see. Maybe I will stop at 172, or maybe I'll keep going until I get to 150. Its not so much about the number to me as how I look and feel in my own skin.
2. Get fit! I don't want to just be "skinny" I want to be a kick ass bitch! I want to keep running 5ks, maybe even a half marathon some day! I want to be strong and healthy.
3. Kick that vicious irrational Emily voice out of my brain forever. From now on I'll call her Vemily, I'm sure I'll be talking about this particular issue again. I have been my own worst critic for a very long time. I'm almost 25 and I don't want to be my own worst enemy anymore.
4. Get to a point in my overall life that I am happy more than I am not. I have no grand illusions that life will be always be full of happiness, but I know that I can make it better than it is now. This has a lot to do with other issues outside of weight loss and fitness, so I won't really talk about it much. But it is one of my main goals.
I want to use this blog to help become a better me. I'm hoping if it works, maybe someday it will inspire some other girl who doesn't think she can achieve her goals and dreams to work towards them until she does.
I've never blogged before, so this will be a bit of a learning experience for me. My next few posts I want to focus on what I've done in the past and what I'm still doing that works and what didn't work for me. I also think my next post I'll do a little bit of a personal intro, so you know a little bit about who you are listening to! My weigh in day is Wednesday. I've cheated and weighed in early (I tend to do this at least once a week, but I don't count any loss until my official day) and I'm hoping for a big loss of 2 pounds this week. That will put me back into ONEderland! We'll see soon enough.
Until next time.
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