My Story

I am 34 years old and my weight-loss story is a rollercoaster.  I grew up thin, but got very chubby through my early school years.  I have always been a very anxious person so the extra weight definitely affected me a great deal.  I'll just say that I wouldn't go through middle school again if you paid me a million dollars.  I thinned out in high school and got obsessed with losing weight my senior year.  I graduated from high school at 113 pounds, while carb-starving myself on the Atkins diet, obsessively exercising and taking lots of diet pills.  I am very lucky that I didn't have a heart attack.

I gained the freshman fifteen in college but was at a healthy weight through school, and got married to my high school sweetheart in 2002. A year or two later I began gaining weight again.  It was slow so I didn't notice it right away but all of a sudden I found myself at over 200 pounds.  I was almost in shock when the reality of my gain finally hit me, I was in such denial for so long.  I felt so embarrassed, so mad at myself and so depressed.  I spent the next 10 years dieting and being depressed and throwing pity party after pity party.

I decided in 2011 that I had to do something about my health and so I went back to the gym, started with a trainer and tried to change my eating habits.  My weight loss was very slow and over the next year I lost about 20 pounds but more importantly my mindset changed.  My trainer taught me how to step out of my comfort zone.  She showed me how to be confident again and that I was capable of more than I ever thought possible.  My whole way of thinking changed.  Over the next year unfortunately my trainer (now good good friend) had to move away so I started with a new trainer and kept going.  Towards the end of 2012 something clicked and I just got into the groove.  By summer of 2013 I had lost 70 pounds.  I was running regularly, I was doing box jumps, level 4 pilates and lifting lots of weights and flipping tires.  I was amazed by myself.  And I felt GOOD.

Towards the end of 2013 we moved into a new house.  I'll save the sob story (you can read it here if you'd like) but long story short, the next year or so was a nightmare.  The house we bought had major major problems that were costly and incredibly stressful.  It seemed to never end and I did not deal well.  Like I mentioned, I always have struggled with anxiety and worry but our experience sent me over the edge.  I had a mental breakdown and spent many months struggling to make it through each day.  I am sad to admit that there was a time where I thought swallowing all the pills in the cabinet would be the best choice, the only relief, but praise God the Almighty Healer that I never decided to make that choice.  It was a total nightmare, but by God's grace and with the help of my family and friends, my amazing counselor, my pastor, an awesome doctor, some meds and an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder diagnosis I finally was able to function again.  It was like climbing out of a big deep black hole. Some days and situations are still challenging and always will be, but I have learned ways to cope and I am so incredibly thankful to be here.

After the crappy year or so, I found myself having tipped the scale at 265.6 pounds.  When everything happened at home, I had stopped going to the gym, stopped training, and ended up gaining all the weight back, plus a few pounds.  Honestly, the old me would have been SO upset, SO pissed off, but after everything that I got through that year, the weight wasn't going to get me down.  I was done throwing pity parties for myself.  So the beginning of this year, 2015, I got serious about getting to pilates sessions and even started personal training again in early May.  Lately I have stepped up the cardio and gym time and really gotten into a good place with healthy eating.  I am finally feeling that spark again and as I'm writing this I am down almost 20 pounds.  I am so excited for this journey.  If I can get through all that I have so far, I can get healthy again, and if I can do it, anyone can.

Join me?