I was stuck. I had reached a point in life where I seemed to be going nowhere fast, and as a result I was quite unhappy and restless. I had an epiphany (not sure quite when that was...), and decided I needed to make some changes. I decided to start this blog as a way for me, personally, to keep track of myself on the different journeys I have either already begun or am preparing to begin to make those changes happen. Over the next several months to a year I will be on several different journeys, some of them with deadlines, others ongoing. My first journey began back at the end of January of this year and will be a life-long ongoing one; weight loss.
I am not an obese person, nor do I believe that I am fat and ugly. I think for women to feel that way about themselves is tragic and it breaks my heart. Let me step up on my soap box for a moment. Everyone is beautiful, no matter how big or small they are. Everyone is made differently, and as long as you are striving to live a healthy, active lifestyle, it doesn't matter if you have a few extra pounds or if you show a few ribs. Just be the healthiest you that you can be. We all have a purpose to fulfill on this Earth, and as long as we are taking care of ourselves physically as well as mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, we should be happy with who we are; everyone else can just get over it. Getting off of my soapbox now...
As for me, I am simply overweight and sick of being pudgy. I've always been on the "thick" side. As a child I was obese, and then I joined a year-round swim team and had a massive growth spurt, thank the Lord. At my thinnest (14 years old) I was about 5'8" and 145 pounds, a size 8.
I reached my heaviest at the age of 20 after my first year of college. I don't think I will ever know exactly how much I weighed at my heaviest, because during that period of my life I tended to avoid scales-at all costs. So, my best guess is that at 5'10" I weighed probably 215 pounds, hovering around the size 16 mark. I blame a serious lack of will-power and the 24/7 Steak 'N Shake that was up the road from my first college. Since then I have slowly lost a little bit of that weight, dropping down to between 200-205, and then before I had my epiphany moment, I had gone down to 197-199 pounds.
But, that is in the past. Never again will I see that 200 mark on the scale! Back in January my new roommate, Holly, and I decided we wanted to be accountability partners and encourage one another to get healthy and lose weight. We set out our individual goals, made a pact (I think we even signed it LoL!), got pumped and started our new, healthier lifestyles. At our first weight in, I had already lost a few more pounds and was already down to 194 pounds! So, I had already lost around 10 pounds from slight alterations in my diet and, most likely, from working all the time, although I was still at a size 14. So, to further this new weight loss, I decided to keep track of my calories. I did this for about a month, and actually lost a couple of pounds! It felt nice to see some success. After a while, though, I needed to see more improvement. I have a deadline, after all! But we will come back to that... One night, while flipping channels during a bought of insomnia, I happened across an infomercial for TurboFire. Basically, it's similar to P90X, except, in my opinion, geared more towards women. It involved kickboxing, plyometrics, and High Intensity Interval Training. It was that night that I decided I should give up my anti-workout stance (a.k.a. LAZINESS) and try this thing. So, naturally, I found it on ebay (duh, I'm NOT gonna pay full price!), and a few days later, began my body-reshaping. This was the end of February.
Now, I am naturally skeptical of any kind of product from an infomercial (especially workout videos-what with the high volume of options on the market these days and all). So I went into this excited but skeptical, and also doubting my own abilities. I surprised myself, and so did the DVDs! Here we are a little over a month later, and I am currently at 190 pounds (not much weight lost since February), but I am now in a size 12! I have not been losing weight, but I have definitely been losing inches! I haven't measured in the past couple of weeks, but after 2.5 weeks I had lost 8 inches all over, so I think I've probably lost between 10-13 inches all over so far. Off to a good start, I think! Back to that whole deadline thing.
My goal is to be at least a size 10 by June 10, which is when I leave for my European summer extravaganza. Three weeks touring Europe with my friend Iva, and 5 weeks studying in Spain in a study abroad program through my school. I can't be going around Europe reinforcing European stereotypes of Americans being fat! Not cool. More to come on the Europe thing. That would be journey #2 of the year ;)
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