Weight Loss: My Journey Thus Far

Hello all, here's my new attempt at finding something worth blogging about. ;) I'm coming clean here and laying a foundation, so this one is a little long. I am hoping that blogging about this will help to keep me accountable as I forge ahead. Bless you if you bear with me through the whole thing. ;D

Weight Loss: My Journey to A Healthier, Hotter, Better ME!

Back Story

I don't really remember caring about my health or my weight too much until I was in high school, so I'm going to go to start there. I was around 147 pounds throughout most of high school without really trying very hard. I'm 5' 5" and have always been more curvy then lean. At the doctors office I remember being told that I was slightly over what my weight and BMI should probably be but that I wasn't in a danger zone by any means. I've never been athletic per say, but at that time, I was forced to take PE, I walked across our little town to and from school everyday, I enjoyed bike riding out to my grandfather's ranch house occasionally, I loved the pool in the summer, and I was often doing something at the theater that involved a little bit of dancing. My meals were also mostly dictated by a school lunch program and the food provided by my mother who happens to be a home health care nurse who knows a thing or two about nutrition.

Then came college. I don't really know how I managed to do it, but I maintained that average of a curvy 147 pounds through my first year of college avoiding the dreaded freshman 15. Maybe it was because I was running all over the UW campus all day long eating like a broke college student who couldn't stand eating ramen 3 meals a day, which meant I had to get creative at meal time. Maybe, it was because I occasionally went to the gym (and I do mean OCCASIONALLY) to hit the elliptical or catch a badminton game with a girlfriend since it was included in tuition and I didn't believe in not using facilities I was already paying for. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because I was stressed out about living in Seattle while my fiance was in Dayton (Eastern Washington for those of you that just went, Ohio?), having to plan our wedding over texts and MSN messenger all the while knowing that I had already bought my wedding dress....a year before the actual date....In any case, my weight stayed right where it was and as before, I didn't give it much conscious thought.

And then, I got married. lol I started making a little extra money, commuting from Everett to Seattle and back everyday by bus, and settling into a comfy but extremely busy existence with my wonderful husband who has never been demanding an any way about my appearance. And then I was approx 40 pounds heavier in what seemed like an overnight gain to me although I guess it was a gradual thing over a span of a few years. It was the kind of incremental weight gain that happens in such a subtle way that it just sneaks right up on you. The weight gain was me in focus, layering on in places where I already was curvy. If I had gained 40 pounds in just like my stomach and my backside, I think I would have noticed a lot sooner....

So all of this means that I just kind of ignored it if I noticed at all until, I started to see a double chin in every single photo of me. Everyone who has gone or is currently going through a journey like mine has a point when they realized that enough is enough, for me, it was as simple as noticing that weight gain in my face. I quite suddenly felt uncomfortable in my own skin, a foreign feeling to me up to this point, and was newly oversensitive to how the rest of my body had changed. A huge part of it was and is vanity, but I also realized how sluggish and older than my years I had been feeling lately and how I was always getting sick even before I started working in a preschool. ;) I just wasn't feeling healthy either. So, when my soon to be sister in law Tiara started loosing weight using this app on her phone, I was inspired by her thought it sounded easy enough to try.

Long story short, I use a free app called Weight Loss on my phone to track my calorie intake, calorie burn through exercise, protein intake, carb intake, and fat intake. I measure my food, pay attention to serving sizes, pre make my lunches, etc. I started working out more, hitting the small gym at our new apartment complex, regularly using the burn mode on our Just Dance 4 game, starting a once a week belly dancing class and walking on my lunch breaks when possible.

When I started my new job as a floating teacher at Lake Forest Park Montessori, I lost 5 pounds. I don't count that weight loss because it was before I really stepped up my game and started using the phone app. I started really sincerely trying after Christmas of of 2012. I started out at 183 pounds on January 1st. As of last Sunday, March 24th, I weighed 163.8 pounds. I've had a few ups and downs with it, but I am very proud of my progress thus far and am feeling fabulous and a lot healthier already! I am about to change it up a little to keep from plateauing at 20 pounds lost and am ready for the next 20!.

In my next blog I'm going to tell you all about that. For now though, that was a lot of reading! If you hung in through all of that, THANK YOU!

To Be Continued....

BLESSINGS TO YOU.