I thought creating a page to give the in-depth version of my journey to becoming healthy was a great way for people to learn more about me, from where I started and how I am traveling this long and sometimes bumpy road. It is really long because I am nearly 6 months into this journey. I tried to give some headers to each section so if you don't want to read it all at once you can pick & choose what you read :)
How did I become obese?
To tell this story I probably need to go back to my late teens. We don't need to discuss how many years ago that was. If it were based on how long ago my mind feels like it was then I would say just a few short years ago. Moving on.... I began working a desk job straight out of high school because I chose not to attend college. At my graduation I was probably at a normal weight for my height and age. As I continued into my early twenties I gradually began to put on weight. A combination of working behind a desk all day, eating poorly and not being as active as I should are the factors that contributed to my changing body. At one point during this time I did stress my body to the point of shutting down my menstrual cycles for nearly four months. This probably caused a good 15 pound weight gain alone. However, I sought medical treatment and managed to get my body back on schedule. Sadly, the weight did not all disappear magically. Sigh.
Skip forward a few years into my mid-20's after nearly 8 years of neglecting my body inside and out. I began experiencing some major bouts of depression, although, I did not realize what it was. Honestly, had my thoughts ever been vocalized, I would most likely have been hospitalized. Thankfully, I never acted upon any of those dark & lonely thoughts. I was able to function in my everyday life despite the debilitating effects of the depression. It was only when I was in the privacy of my home did I close myself off and go numb. Part of the way I did that was through food. Binge eating was my thing. Plain and simple. I was a carb, greasy-food & chocolate addict! And, I was a couch potato in the truest sense of the saying. My life was nothing as I had envisioned it to be at the age of 25 and this realization was taking its toll on me emotionally and physically.
Life Changing Moment
During the Christmas of 1995 a co-worker told my brother's and I we should give our father the best gift ever and attend church with him. Ugh! Really? In my mind I was screaming at this co-worker to just mind his own business. I was so mad. Over the next two days I began to think how much my dad really would like for me to go with him to church. He was, after all, asking me to go all the time. Maybe if I went this one time he would stop asking. This was my theory and I was sticking to it. And so, I went to church the Sunday before Christmas of that year. Hello? Can someone say "feeling totally out of my element" the moment I walked through the doors? I was overwhelmed to say the least. Everyone was very nice and I remember thinking it must be the holiday season of cheerfulness that had everyone looking and acting so happy......at church! Yeah, that must be it because church was supposed to be boring. I was so intrigued by the preaching, music and overall atmosphere that I had to attend again after the new year to see if the "holiday cheerfulness" was packed up and stored away until next Christmas. Guess what? It wasn't! And so, there began an entirely different journey of my soul. On March 3, 1996 I knew God was knocking on the door of my heart and I opened that door. I prayed a simple prayer asking for forgiveness of my sins and to help me turn my life around. The term was "born again Christian" but I like to think of it as receiving a spiritual heart transplant. In so many ways my life was radically changed.
I felt it necessary to include that part of my story because it is by far the most important decision I have ever made in my life. Despite the turn both my emotional & spiritual lives had taken, I was still very much on the wrong path to health. I was coming out of my shell by making many new single friends at church and I even began working for a direct sell company doing in-home shows. You would have to know how shy I am to know how big of a deal this was for me. The darkness that had once engulfed my life had been replaced by blue skies and Sonshine! Still, I continued to gain weight steadily.
Hitting rock bottom & climbing up again
Over the next 10 years I struggled with shame over how much weight I had gained. I started to recognize the cycles of depression I was battling as well. I sought help for it finally and began to take medication to even myself out emotionally. This was a very hard step for me to take because I felt as though I was being weak by having to take a pill to function. Still, it greatly improved my emotional well-being and in 2006.....January 25th to be exact, I decided to join a gym and rid my home of what I call "crap food" and turn my physical life around. Oh, I was so determined! There were tears in the beginning as I allowed myself to worry about what other people thought of my size when I was at the gym. God was gracious and gave me a song one night after leaving the gym in tears. This is the song:
From that point forward I never cared one iota what people thought. I was not there for them, I was there for ME! I also joined Weight Watcher's online and turned my eating habits around. By fall of that year I had lost 50 lbs and feeling better than I had in over 15 years. Confidence is probably the biggest change next to my decreasing waistline that people noticed. Then it happened. A knee injury. Something as simple as me standing up from sitting on the floor & not using anything to help support myself caused what I fully believe now was a slight tear in my meniscus. I sought medical advice but did not follow through to get a final diagnosis. I basically stopped exercising all together. I continued to eat well into early 2007 but, that soon faded from my daily routine as well.
Falling off the mountain
You can probably guess that by no longer exercising AND going back to the unhealthy eating habits I began to put the weight back on slowly but surely. I kept telling myself all through 2007 I needed to stop this downward spiral before I ended up back where I was on January 24, 2006. But, I did not listen to that urgent voice inside of me and I kept doing all the wrong things. Sigh (again).
Fast-forward to 2013
In late 2012 an on-line friend named Sandy contacted me about an upcoming Biggest Loser competition starting on January 4, 2013 and asked if I was interested in being on her team. Ugh. I knew I needed to do something but I wasn't "feeling" it and I kept thinking I needed to feel that same "light bulb switched on" feeling I had felt back in January of 2006. The thought of being on a TEAM and other people depending on ME to be good was more than I was ready for. Yet, despite it all, I said yes to the competition. It was 12 weeks in length and everyone could do whatever program they chose to do in order to lose weight. I chose not to join Weight Watcher's again for financial reasons so I joined a free, online site called My Fitness Pal and began tracking my food/water intake as well as exercise. I did not incorporate exercise much at first. It took all I had to muster up the the courage to step on the scale and get my mind wrapped around how much weight I had gained back in 7 years. The number wasn't quite as bad as I was imagining but suffice it to say, I had indeed gained back everything I lost in 2006 +5 lbs. Double-sigh!
Ever so slowly I was adjusting to my decision to begin a new journey toward becoming healthy. And, by the end of the 12 weeks I had lost nearly 20 lbs. After reaching out to the winner of the competition and asking how she lost so much weight I realized I needed to devote myself to more exercise. I began to exercise at minimum of 5 days per week for a total of 60 minutes each time. I split my time up and did 30 minutes in the a.m. and 30 minutes in the p.m. I also began taking a strength training class at church in early April. I wanted to keep the momentum going after the Biggest Loser competition ended so I joined another online weight loss competition through a site called Diet Bet. During this time I was becoming friends with another of my BL teammates, Tricia. Tricia became a HUGE source of inspiration for me. She had traveled the same road I was currently on. Actually, she was still traveling her own journey but was much closer to her destination than I was. I have learned it is so very important to seek out other people who share the same goals as you because the support is immeasurable. I won that Diet Bet challenge by losing another 10% of my body weight in 4 weeks. So, by the end of April 2013 I was 25 1/2 lbs. Yes, it was finally becoming a lifestyle for me!!!
At the start of this blog
As of May 25, 2013 I am officially down 31 1/2 lbs and have lost over 12" through cutting out fast-foods, a big majority of the carb-filled meals I used to eat, adding tons of fresh fruits & veggies, drinking 10 glasses of water a day minimum and working out regularly. I am averaging 1.5 lbs lost per week, which I believe is a very healthy way to lose weight.
Has it been easy? Not always. Have I eaten poorly from time to time? You bet I have. Do I always like to exercise? Nope. But, nothing worth having is usually easy....we all have bad days where we slip....and I never end a 30 minute exercise routine by saying "gosh, I wish I hadn't done that." I no longer beat myself up for eating too much or exercising too little. If I have a rough day, I do better the next. I am learning to keep it real & in perspective!
What has worked for me: EXERCISE
When you are extremely obese and have knee pain, exercise can be daunting. After all, it was a knee injury that initially set my previous failure in motion. I say initially because I made a choice to stop exercising & eat properly all together and that was the true reason for my failure in 2006/2007. I thought I would share some of the things I did/do as a means to get my exercise in.
For financial reasons I did not want to join a gym so I needed to find ways to exercise at home. I already had a Nintendo Wii console and Wii Fit Advanced w/balance board. I started out doing Advanced Step and The Obstacle Course routines. I did this for weeks as I acclimated my body to exercise. I then incorporated the Wii Island Cycling routine and fell in love with that.
Then, a friend told me about Leslie Sansone's Walk Away The Pounds programs. These are the two I own through my Amazon Instant Video account but you can purchase the physical DVD's if you don't do live-streaming. Click HERE to be taken to Amazon to view all her products!
I fell in love with these immediately because they were very low impact, which my knees loved! Don't let low-impact fool you though - I got a good workout from these! In the first week of using her program I remember wanting to throw something at the TV when she said "okay, let's get ready for knee lifts". Ugh, those killed me! However, I pushed myself and after a few short weeks I realized I no longer dreaded doing them.
After attending a Mandisa concert I came home and purchased one of her MP3 albums because her music is AWESOME for exercising to. I then started using the moves I learned from Leslie's program but to my own upbeat, contemporary Christian music. I felt like I was having church while I exercised!
In early April 2013 I joined a fitness class offered by FaithFit, a ministry for women at my church. I started with Basic Step but soon learned it was too much for my knees so I switched to Strength Training or S.T. as I will often abbreviate. Let me just say......
I LOVE STRENGTH TRAINING!!!!!
In this class we use small handheld weights (I use 3 lb weights) and our own body's resistance to strengthen and tone as many muscles as we can in a 1 hour time period. Susan is my instructor and she is tough but I know it is all in love. I have struggled finding my balance with S.T. and my horrible knees! I finally had to seek out orthopedic counsel for fear I might be on the verge of causing serious injury if I wasn't careful. Thankfully there is hope for me with my knees. Dr. said they are strong and have good range of motion and I am cleared to continue doing what I am doing but avoiding lunges or anything that causes pain in the joint. He prescribed a stronger anti-inflammatory medication as well. Eventually I will probably need gel injections to help reduce pain/swelling but for now I will keep plugging away.
I alternate cardio & S.T. workouts every other day to get the best results. I cannot emphasize enough how important S.T. is when you are obese and losing weight/inches. This is what tones your body to get rid of the flab people!!!
I purchased my hand weights from Wal-Mart and they look similar to this:
I also purchased a Gold's Gym folding exercise mat:
If I had to pick just ONE thing to tell people when it comes to how you eat when you are striving to become healthy and lose weight it would be....
ENJOY WHAT YOU EAT (PERIOD)
You will most likely need to make some drastic changes in what you put into your mouth as I had to. I was the "Drive Thru Queen" and I often found myself, upon leaving work, mentally going through the list of fast food joints that were on my way home. I always knew when I was eating far too much FF because NONE of them sounded good. Yeah, when you are a FF junkie and nothing greasy or carb-loaded sounds good, you are in way too deep!
I am fortunate because I love most all fruits & vegetables. I am not a huge consumer of red meats (unless in the form of a greasy burger from Culver's) either. My biggest hindrance was being LAZY! I didn't want to take the time to buy veggies that had to be washed & prepped before I could eat them. I wanted my food instantly. {I have to roll my eyes at myself at that last sentence because it is such a huge part of my becoming obese to begin with}
To begin with I cleaned out the refrigerator to make room for all the fresh foods I would be storing inside it. Next, I went to the grocery store and stocked up on all my fave's. Initially I went on an apple eating frenzy. I don't know why, I think because I knew I loved apples and they were a quick & easy fruit to consume. I have a handy-dandy corer/wedger so all I ever have to do is rinse the apple, wedge it and voila! snack time! In the beginning I ate them with peanut butter (Jif Reduced Fat To-Go) because I needed the extra sustainability I received from the PB. And, I started out with more allowable calories to consume so I could afford 250 calories for 2 TBSP of the creamy goodness. Now, I may still have an apple w/PB but if I do, I make that my breakfast or lunch.....never as a snack. I love bananas but again, I reserve them for part of my overall meal vs. a snack usually. I love them in my smoothies when I am making a smoothie be a meal. I love salads! LOVE them!! I especially love to load them up with lots of different veggies. That is me and I know not everyone is a fan of F&V's.
My smoothies can be simply a refreshing snack or they can be a full-blown meal. As a snack I use only a cup of Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, flaxseed meal and any combination of unsweetened frozen fruits which for me is usually strawberries, blueberries, peaches & pineapple. It all depends on what sounds yummy at the time. As a meal I will use some protein powder and maybe a banana or peanut butter thrown in. One ingredient that goes into ALL of my smoothies is SPINACH. Fresh, organic, baby spinach OR kale. You don't taste it but it packs a huge nutritional punch! Great way to get some green veggies in your diet if you are one who does not like to eat them on their own.
Snacks.........I am a snacker. I try to keep my snacks around 100 calories or less if possible. I like snack-size bags of popcorn, Fiber One Brownies (for my chocolate fixes), pudding or jello, Greek yogurt w/fruit on the bottom, an apple, some granola w/almonds....you get the picture.
Have you ever heard of Pinterest? If not, I am so very sorry because it is my favorite go-to place when I am looking for a recipe (or any other millions of cool things). Especially healthy versions of things I love. I was a major "order a pizza in once a week" person before. Remember how I said I like to binge eat? Well, I would order a medium or large and could easily consume 1/2 of it in one sitting. There is just something about a thin crust topped with red sauce, melty cheese and tasty toppings. How would I ever give that up? Thanks to Pinterest.com I didn't have to. I found a recipe for Tortilla Pizza HERE. BTW, I just ate this while typing this page, lol. I learned with a little effort I could find healthier alternatives to the things I love to eat.
To wrap up how I deal with nutrition is that I try to watch my portion sizes, track my calories so I know where I am and can make conscious & wise choices & drink at least 10 glasses of water per day. Above all, I eat what I want and what thrills my taste buds because let's face it, you can eat an insane helping of anything but if it didn't taste very good, you will be hungry in about 30 minutes.
And that is my journey to this point. I have a very long road to travel ahead of me as my first ultimate weight goal is 100 lbs lost! So, I have appx 70 lbs more to go before I reach that mile marker. I may type a Part II when I reach that point but for now I will just make regular blog entries about my life where I will share often where I am along my journey.
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