How I lost the weight? This is probably the biggest question I get asked. I told you in my last blog about how I gained that weight, well today I will share how I got it off. I was frustrated with myself, with how I looked & felt. Here I was at a heavy 250lbs and I was miserable. The 1st 40 lbs came off pretty quickly, I was going to the gym, doing Zumba, turbo kick & walking our neighborhood with my newborn baby. I kinda plateaued at 210. I was comfortable I looked in the mirror and no longer saw a super fat girl, but I was still very over weight and very physically uncomfortable. The next Year I spent in denial, not wanting to admit I needed to lose more weight. Finally in early 2011 my husband was hospitalized for a heart condition at the age of 32. I was rocked to my core! This was not the 1st time we had visited the ER with his condition but it was the 1st time I felt 100% vulnerable, exposed & partly to blame. As I stated before I am a food addict always have been and always will be. My husband is too, and while his condition is genetic it is made worse by his weight issue. I knew I wasn't doing my all to help either of us lose weight & get healthy. In that moment I realized if we didn't take our lives back then our precious 2 year old boy would lose his parents. I dedicated the rest of my year to health and wellness. More importantly I sat down and wrote out my goals, & I decided what was most & least important to me. I wanted to Quit making EXCUSES, I wanted to disprove all the haters that said it couldn't be done. Mostly I wanted to do it all on my own. So I went and canceled my Gym membership & took up running again. I was dead set on proving you could lose weight with No Gym, No fancy/expensive equipment, No drugs and absolutely NO Starvation. I began eating a diet that I created based on the food pyramid. I began running again, something I started before I got pregnant with my son. Now let me state that when I say running that is a very loose term at the beginning. I started walking 5 minutes, jogging 60 seconds, then walking 5 more minutes. Slowly but surely each week I added in more time or running faster & harder in the time I did run. I built up my strength by doing crunches & push ups, and every now and then I threw in a biggest loser, Pilate's, or Turbo Jam DVD. When I say that I did push ups I started out only being able to do 1 but slowly added in 1 more, then another, & another. It was the same with crunched & the DVDs I couldn't do the entire thing at 1st but I kept trying. Over time with the right diet and exercise I started dropping lbs. I was averaging 1 to 2 lbs per week. Now I know when you are extremely over weight you get upset with a loss that small. I was no exception to that, but what you need to remember is you didn't gain 5, 10 or 15 lbs in a week you should not expect to lose it that quickly either. My Dr. also told me that any more that 2 lbs a week and you are probably going to eventually gain it all back. Then in the summer I tried Low Carb, High Fiber, with lots of Dark Green Leafy Veggies, lean protein, (fish 3 days a week, chicken 3, and beef 1). Its not something I recommend but it was great for us for summer since we BBQ alot. Then in October I was down to 165lbs, & I was ecstatic. From Oct to Jan 1 we went off of any kind of DIET and just tried to maintain the loss we had all year. You may ask why I say we, well my husband was doing this with me & I am proud to say he has lost 38lbs so far, & that's with a full time Job working 40+ hours a week and entertaining people for business. The next question I am sure You may be asking is, why we did this? Well its simple really we wanted to see if we could. We needed to make sure when we do lose the rest of the weight, that are we going to be able to maintain and not gain it back. I am happy to say that even with all the holidays, the temptations and treats we did manage to keep it off.
To the present.....
Since Jan of 2012 we have changed a few more things. We are back on the food pyramid kind of eating I described earlier & we are cutting calories to finish losing weight, but more importantly we are making it a lifestyle change we aren't crash dieting, we aren't starving ourselves & we are working out 5 days a week minimum. I am now in the process of studying to become a certified personal trainer, & I am about to run another half marathon & am training for a full.
Let me address another issue really quickly that I will go into more in the next blog.
When you Eat the Right foods, I.E. Fruits & veggies, lean protein and the proper amount of healthy fat and dairy you can still cut calories and be extremely full.
I hope I have helped you understand me and my journey a little better in this blog. In the next blog I will address healthy eating facts & myths and touch on the issues I have now that I am thinner.
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