About five months ago, I made a very conscious decision to change my eating lifestyle. I, like many I know, have always struggled with weight maintenance. I would get down to a great weight, then gain it all back, plus some. Story of my life. Until now.
Let's start from the beginning. I began gaining weight after high school. During the course of a bad relationship I put on forty pounds- which I then lost after the tumultuous breakup. Being single again, I took time to "find myself" if you will, and spent hours at the gym after work, getting in the best shape of my life. After some serious "single time" I met someone, a man who is now my loving husband. But we all know what tends to happen when we fall in love- you want to spend all your time with that person, thus neglecting the gym for lying around watching movies, cuddling, and EATING. I put on twenty of the pounds I had lost. Then, after a quick wedding (I'll delve more into our relationship in another post- but for now just say, he was in the Army, deploying in less than a year, so we decided to do it quickly) I put on over 70 pounds with my first pregnancy. SEVENTY POUNDS. I was well over 200 at that point (I'll take the chance to insert that I'm 5'8"), I think I was 245 if I'm remembering correctly. That's waaaaaaay more than the average female is supposed to gain during pregnancy. The "average" weight a pregnant woman is supposed to gain is around 30 pounds, less if you're overweight. So I doubled that weight, plus some. My daughter was two months old when my husband deployed to Afghanistan. I initially lost some weight with my post-partum depression plus the depression from my husband leaving. Once the initial pain of him leaving was lifted, I started emotionally eating, which didn't help me lose any baby weight. The only reason I didn't gain even more weight was because I was breastfeeding and produced tons of milk (for those of you who don't know, you burn an average of 500 calories a day breastfeeding, more in my case since I WAY overproduced). I was living back with my parents to save money and pay off our car, and credit cards for the beginning of his deployment, so I did not have many healthy eating options, as my teenage sister still lived there and my mom kept the house supplied with ample sugary "easy" snacks.
My husband came home on R&R after four months and I was down to around 190 pounds. I gained back a few while he was home, lots of eating out, and then for the remaining nine months of his deployment, I lost almost thirty more pounds. I ate less, ate very few carbs, and did lots of working out- at the gym I did cardio and weight training, at home I did P90X. Once my husband came home, I quickly, and I'm talking within four months, gained twenty pounds. I stopped working out and eating healthy because I LOVE cooking and baking and wanted to make him many delicious things since he had been so deprived of tasty foods for a year. I stopped working out since I wanted to spend every waking moment with him. After gaining that twenty pounds back, I was at 185 and we decided to have another baby. I "only" gained 50 pounds this time, which put me back up at 235.
After I had our second daughter, we moved from Colorado, my home for over 18 years, to Ohio, where I had never been. I took the move really hard- I had an incredibly difficult six-week old and a 2 1/2 year old and I was exhausted, still hormonal from having a brand new baby, and missing my family and anyone/anything familiar. I ate worse than I ever had before- I would eat a king size pack of Reese's on my way home from the grocery store, then eat half of a red velvet ice cream cake later that night. Plus five pieces of pizza for dinner, soda, and who knows what else. I had veered completely out of control. My moment of realization came about a month later when my mom was out visiting. I was attempting to get dressed for a date with my husband, when I finally looked in the mirror. Up until that point, for the whole two months I had been in Ohio, I hadn't looked in a full length mirror. We were living in a hotel for a while that didn't have one, then once we moved into our home, I had just avoided uncovering the one we had in our bedroom. And when I looked into it that day, getting ready for our date, I realized I still looked pregnant. Really pregnant. And I was just so angry with myself for letting myself go yet again that I decided to make a change. I decided that day that I was done with binge eating and junk food.
The last few months have not been a walk in the park, but they haven't been so awful I can't stand them. I make sure half my plate at dinner is covered with a vegetable or a salad, which I eat before my protein or carb. I only eat whole wheat pastas, brown rice, and other whole grain carbs. No white breads or rice for me. I eat lean proteins, and in moderation. I started tracking my calories for a couple of weeks to see how much I was really consuming. I have an elliptical (nothing fancy, one we found on craigslist for $400) and I work out 3-5 times a week (five times more often than not).
I have lost 51 pounds as of three weeks ago. I am down to 184. I don't have a scale at home. I had weighed myself when I was home in Colorado for the holidays. I was terrified to stay at my parent's house during the holidays especially because of all of the bad food. I learned to eat sweets in moderation. I still love chocolate. I still make mistakes. But then, after I have had one or two too many cookies, I make my next choice a healthy one. I just recently started to bake again. And now, after I've had one or two delectable warm cookies straight from the oven, I freeze the rest so I can pull out a small amount at a time.
Losing weight, for good, keeping it off, isn't easy. There is no "secret". It's hard work, learning to have control over food, pushing myself to exercise when I don't want to, realizing healthy food can be delicious, learning to love vegetables...but it's all worth it. My face and arms don't look so chubby in pictures anymore, so I am now included in pictures with my girls instead of taking pictures of just them. I am not as "tired" all the time (although my seven-month old still isn't sleeping through the night) and have more energy for my husband and kids. I fit back into my old jeans again and am not just wearing "stretchy" pants every day.
I still have a ways to go- I would like to lose forty more pounds or so to get to a comfortable weight. Even when I was in the mid to lower 160's I still had some weight to give. I don't want/need to look like a stick, but I want to be healthy. To not jiggle in multiple places on my body. To be able to wear things that don't cut in to my "love handles". I have a long term goal though. I don't expect it to happen overnight or in a month or two- when I started my weight loss, I gave myself a year to get to a goal weight. I don't have an exact number in mind. I'll know it when I get there.
These changes take time. So don't be discouraged! And don't try to do everything at once! I built up habits over twenty-plus years and I don't expect them to change immediately. I realized that every single diet I did had failed because it wasn't realistic. I would lose some weight then gain it all back, plus some. I know now that a LIFESTYLE change was necessary, not some diet that would never stick. I had to decide- be healthy for forever, or binge eat, on and off for the rest of my life and keep being fat, then thinner, then even heavier, then thinner again....and I chose to be healthy. I CHOOSE to be healthy. Every day.
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