The Base Line - The starting point for my weight loss

This is a tough post to write, just putting this all out there, but here it goes!

As a kid I was always on the heavier side, or at least I thought I was until I saw these photos.  Amazing what a few years worth of perspective will do and how much teasing can convince you of something!  My Mom says I wasn't but I think that's because that's what Mom's say.  It could also be that I just had a bunch of smaller than average friends.  Either way, my perception was that I was the chubby girl growing up.  I was always very active as a child; involved in soccer, dance, riding my bike, not to mention running around our town for hours on end each day.  Even with all that activity I still thought I was a heavier kid.  Granted I also remember a day when I ate an entire can of cherry pie filling as a snack... Throughout elementary school I was teased about being "fat".  I was called horrendous names and even had my hair lit on fire at the bus stop.  Kids can to so cruel!  Because of the teasing I didn't join the fun groups I wanted to or play as many sports as I wanted to.  I kept to my small group of friends and my school work.  Luckily back in this day once I was home I escaped most of the teasing since social media wasn't a thing yet.  Heck, texting wasn't a thing yet.  Man I sound old...  When it came to food, I wanted to eat the chicken burgers and chocolate milk for lunch every day just like everyone else did.  As you can imagine that doesn't do much for your health.  I remember being in grade 7 or 8 and hitting the 100 pound mark and being so sad.  I often thought to myself "maybe in high school the weight will go away".

In high school I was never teased.  Thank heavens for small blessings!  Either the girls that had teased me had grown out of it and didn't care anymore, went to another high school, or ended up pregnant and weren't in school at all anymore.  I was now one small fish in an ocean of about 300 fish.  I didn't change much during high school.  I was still super self conscious and kept to my few good friends and kept my nose in my books.  I didn't play sports, even though I love volleyball, and I didn't join any groups.  Luckily I had an awesome friend, and Siamese twin, who I spent almost every waking minute of the day with.  We had all the same classes, worked at the same place, and spent whatever free time we had together.  Without Trellyn my high school experience probably would have been very different.  We did our thing and if people thought we were strange, weird, or stupid, at least we were strange, weird and stupid together! (I know your hormonal with your new baby Trellyn but try not to cry!!).  I left high school a little bigger than I entered thanks to the easy access to chocolate working at a gas station and the delicious cafeteria cheese fries (I can already taste them already!!!), and I thought "I'll probably lose the weight when I move out to go to college".  I'm going to guess that I was 130 pounds.

Ahh the fresh start of college!  Nobody knew who I was or how I had been teased in the past.  I'm a pretty shy person but I recognized a girl from my high school (who was a few years older than me and really didn't know me) and we immediately became friends.  Sometimes it's nice to have someone familiar to you when you're in a whole new town.  In no time flat our entire class became great friends.  No need to be self conscious which was an amazing change for me!  At the time I thought I ate pretty healthy.  For supper I used my George Foreman grill to cook chicken, beef or pork and sometimes I'd switch it up with some frozen fish.  I always had Lipton Sidekicks or Rice-A-Roni and steamed veggies with some sort of store bought sauce as a side.  I ate these exact things every single night for 2 years.  It was a good attempt at being healthy but looking back now, the thought of how much salt I was ingesting flat out terrifies me!  It's amazing what a few years can do to your perspective.  Short of slow pitch, volley ball, and walking around town with friends, I wasn't very active at all.  By the end of college I was probably 160 pounds.

After college I started working at the YMCA.  I worked the night shift (1:00pm-10:00pm) at the front desk.  This shift came with a great perk; I got to use the gym after closing and was completely alone other than the cleaning staff!  Isn't that every woman's dream, to go to the gym without anyone there to see her?  Being around people that ate healthy and having access to the gym made a good change in me.  I became more active and started to notice that my shape was changing.  Unfortunately it was short lived.  I took a job in an office and quickly put any weight I had lost back on.  Around that same time John and I moved in together.  Bring on the weight!  We LOVE food! I especially love sweets!  I would go so far as to call it an intense love or addiction.  I could honestly eat sweets from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep.  We both love cooking so we made delicious, but not so healthy, meals all the time.  By the time our wedding came around in 2011 I was 180-190 pounds.  This is when I started freaking out!  I know, it took me this long to realize I had a problem.  Like a lot of people I wanted a quick fix with as little effort as possible.  Oh how much I had yet to learn.  I decided to give Herbal Magic a shot.  A cousin of mine had great success with it so I figured maybe I could too.  At first I was overwhelmed with the amount of food I had to eat and had a hard time eating it all, and I did manage to lose about 10 pounds.  But it didn't take long for the novelty of the plan to wear off, plus it was very expensive.  In no time flat I gained back all the weight I had lost.

For the next while I plugged along, overweight but happy.  Until I became pregnant.  I was so sick in the first trimester that I lost close to 10 pounds.  Eating nothing but Cheerios is a great way to lose weight!  Of course that didn't last long (nor should it have), and by the end of the pregnancy I had gained a healthy 30 pounds and was a whopping 213.  I was never really concerned because this is the one time when some weight gain is good.  Why stress about it when it was healthy for Roman?  I knew after I had Roman that I HAD to get rid of the weight once and for all.  Roman was born July 31st and by March I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight of 195.  This is what I consider my starting point.

 

This weight loss journey was triggered by a typical lunch for Roman and I.   I was going to have some leftovers but had to make Roman something else to eat because what I was eating wasn't good for him.  Then it hit me, if it wasn't good for him, then why on earth was I eating it?  This is when I started to make some real changes in the things I ate. I made small and gradual changes so that they were easy to maintain over the long haul.  This time I'm not dieting, I'm changing my lifestyle to a much healthier one.  Let the journey begin!