About Me
I'm posting this now basically so that I can link to it in my "Old
Posts" section. It will get buried soon enough but I figure once my blog gets up and running on PEERtrainer, people probably want to know who I am and how I got here. So here's the quick run-down:
I'm 31 years old, a middle school English/Journalism teacher, who lives in California. I got married in January 2005 to the greatest guy in the world - and it's so lucky for me that no other woman feels that way about him. HA HA! (Good thing he has a great sense of humor or my next post might be titled "Well, I'm getting another divorce...") I have a four-year-old daughter from my first marriage. We share custody of her with her father and his fiancee, who have a one-year-old son. My daughter loves being a big sister and I am really excited that she gets to have a sibling but I didn't have to wake up every 2 hours to breastfeed! My husband and I have already decided not to have any more children. We're happy with things just the way they are. I won't lie, my fear of gaining too much weight was one of my (many) deciding factors in not wanting to get pregnant again.
I am 5'9", which is one of the reasons my weight got so far out of control; I could carry a lot more without looking "fat," so I used that as a crutch for a long time. I have always had weight issues, though. I was a skinny little girl until I was about 6 or 7 and then the pudge started to creep on. By the time I was 9, I was a chubby kid. At 13, when I graduated from 8th grade, I was already 5'8" and weighed about 180 pounds. That summer I went to Weight Watchers camp (by my own request) and got down to 149. But I didn't really follow the principles I'd learned at camp and ate whatever I wanted, which usually included a LOT of sweets. I love chocolate, cookies, ice cream, etc. etc. etc.
By the time I graduated from high school I was back in the 170s and had to go on high blood pressure medication. When I graduated from college I was closer to 180. The weight was just creeping up, a few pounds a year. I got into the 190s in my mid-20s and for a few months I tried the Atkins diet. It worked initially; I lost about 10 pounds, but I couldn't stay away from bread and pasta, so that didn't last long. When I got married in 2000, I was about 195. After that my weight started to go up more quickly. My husband loved to cook AND to eat out, and he was overweight himself, so we ate a lot. And we ate rich, fattening stuff. By 2001, I was up to about 220.
Now, this is the funny thing: I never believed I was 220. I hadn't weighed myself recently at home (read: out of sight, out of mind), and we went across the country to visit my parents, and I happened to step on the scale in my mom's bathroom. It registered 220, and I completely dismissed it. I figured the scale was off. Denial is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Especially because I was wearing a size 18, sometimes a 20. But nooo, I couldn't weigh 220, THAT would simply be preposterous!
Then on Christmas Day in 2001, we found out I was pregnant. Within a couple of weeks, I was sick as a dog. Pregnancy did NOT agree with me, LOL. I was nauseous all the time. I could barely eat for the first few months and actually lost about 15 pounds at first before I started to feel better, and I ended up gaining just a healthy 35 pounds. The morning my daughter was born, I had a doctor's appointment and I was
exactly 250. That was my highest weight ever.
Due to breastfeeding and having lost before I gained, by the time my daughter was 6 months old, I was below 200 pounds. It felt great and that was when I became resolved to continue losing. I maintained about 195 until she was a year old and I stopped breastfeeding, then I started really trying to lose weight. I kind of took ideas from different weight loss plans. At one point I was trying to really cut down sugar (the Sugarbusters plan). At another point I tried lowering carbs again. I managed to lose about another 10 pounds by January 2004.
Then my husband and I separated. It was an amicable split and we agreed to share custody of our daughter. What it meant was that I suddenly had a new lease on life AND time to myself to do whatever I wanted. I decided it was time to get serious. I joined WW online, bought myself an iPod and started walking. I credit Weight Watchers 100% for my success in turning my health around. Just forcing me to focus on WHAT and HOW MUCH I was putting into my body completely re-trained my brain about nutrition. I learned how to allow myself to eat as much as I
wanted by making substitutions for other things. I also took 30- to 60-minute brisk walks 3 or 4 times a week.
By the end of the summer of 2004 I was down to 162.5 (I will always remember that number because for a year afterward it was the lowest I had gotten to) and was wearing a size 10, which I hadn't worn since high school. I stopped "doing" Weight Watchers, although I still mentally counted points. After a few months on Weight Watchers, you can't help but do it in your head! I began the school year at a new school, started dating this great guy and married him a few months later, and just got so busy that I kind of let my weight loss efforts fall by the wayside. I hung in there, hovering around 165, until about March of 2005, and then I kind of "gave in" and started eating whatever I wanted, which usually included a lot of chocolate chip cookies. Those are my biggest weakness.
In May of 2005, I got up to 175 and put my foot down. I refused to allow myself to continue going in the wrong direction. Coincidentally, that's when I discovered PEERtrainer. It was exactly what I needed: I knew how to eat right and how much to exercise, I just needed some way of staying motivated and accountable. From the day I started, I think there have been no more than five days when I haven't logged every single thing I ate. And in keeping track of my weight every Friday, there were only three or four times when I gained weight. Every other week was a loss or stayed the same, but even those were few and far between. In seven months on PEERtrainer, I lost almost 30 pounds.
Recently I've had a big shake-up in my goals. I've lost the majority of the weight I needed to lose by eating healthy and doing a lot of cardio, and I kind of hit a plateau. I still want to get down to 145, but at this point I also have a lot of flab I
want to get rid of and tighten up. My midsection is still thick, over 30 inches at the smallest point, and my thighs and butt are flabby. So I have started seeing a personal trainer three times a week for strength/weight training, as well as doing 20-25 minutes of light cardio another 3 times per week (on his orders). And the biggest change is in my diet. He has me aiming for 1700-1800 calories per day, with a balance of 50-60% carbs, 20-25% fat and 20-25% protein. It's been a challenge trying to maintain that, but my background in counting points did give me a basis for doing all the work.
So anyway, that's me in a (really big) nutshell. I have no reservations about talking about myself, so please feel free to ask me anything!