This is what I looked liked in the summer of 2009. This is what I am working so hard to never be again. That fat chick in the middle. I cringe when I see this picture. How the hell did I let myself get that way? I was at my heaviest then. A whopping 200 pounds. Since then, I have had a ton of emotional ups and downs in my life. Mostly downs. Those downs also helped to keep me fat. I ate when I was bored, lonely, tired, etc. and I was all of the above all of the time. Then when I ate, I ate like shit. After I ate like shit, I felt like shit. Then I developed a “what the hell” attitude because I felt like I didn’t matter enough and I was already fat so why bother to try to eat right.
I don’t know what got into me but it was like a light bulb went off. In June of 2011, I decided to start moving my ass. I began to count calories. Calories in had to be less than calories out. I have a neighbor that had a baby in March and she wanted to lose the baby weight. We started walking every single day together. We began around June 1 and walked three miles a day religiously. We encouraged each other to get out even when we did not feel like it. I think that having someone depend on me was part of what helped push me to continue. There were so many days when I did not feel like going. I am so happy that I did because the weigh started to come off and I gained an amazing friend out of it. I love that girl dearly.
Another awesome thing happened as I was losing weight. My husband noticed. He started telling me how great I looked and that I was beautiful. Words that I needed to hear. Words that I hadn’t heard in a long time. He started asking me to go workout with him and his buddy. We would go to the parking garage downtown and run the stairs. This was super hard for me and I always paid for it the next day but it also felt so good. My muscles were letting me know that I was actually doing something.
As the fall came and school began, it became increasingly more difficult for my walking buddy and I to get out due to homework, cooking dinner at a reasonable hour, and lack of daylight. Neither one of us wanted to go after dark alone either. I had a groupon that my girl Keri had given me for my birthday last January. It was for a place that has cardio classes as well as pole dancing classes. I figured what the hell so I started attending classes there in the beginning of December. Meanwhile I signed up for CrossFit Boot Camp that was to start in January. I figured I would work out all of December using the groupon and then I would knock out January at boot camp. I also bought another groupon to go back to the cardio and pole classes after boot camp ends.
Boot camp has been awesome. We attend Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for four weeks. I am starting week four and I am so happy I did it. It has been the toughest month of my life and I have used muscles that I did not know I had. I hurt all over but it feels so good. They are major proponents of The Paleo Diet. I am venturing into a somewhat paleo lifestyle. I can not say that I will ever be 100% paleo but I am trying to adopt better cooking and eating habits based on the paleo ways. My honey and I both want to join the gym. I bought him a gift certificate to go try the gym for a month and he loves it too. It is super expensive so we will have to see what we can do to try to join. Not sure that we can squeeze it into our budget but we will certainly try. I really had no idea that I would love it like I do. It is not for the girly girl. You get sweaty and dirty and some of the exercises can be pretty unconventional but that is what I think that appeals to me.
After all this hard work, I am down roughly 40 pounds since the picture from 2009. I would like to drop at least another 20 but I know that I am gaining muscle so that may be a stretch. Muscle weighs more than fat so I am going to just go by clothing size and how they fit, how I look, and how I feel. Below is how I look right now.
Not too bad. I have gone from a very tight 16 down to loose 12 and wearing some 10. I used to wear XL shirts and sweaters and the sweater in the picture above is a medium. The jeans are a 10. The belt needs extra holes punched in it. I used to wear that belt on one of the loosest holes. At my heaviest, I wore a men’s XL sweatshirt or t-shirt just to fit my tummy and boobs. Last night I bought a men’s small pullover fleece and I have plenty of room in it. I feel good enough to go buy sexy panties from Victoria’s Secret. I am in no way in perfect shape and I still have a lot that I want to achieve but I do feel a lot better about how I look. It is going to be a good year. I am liking the new less lazy me.
