I was not a very active teenager. I liked drawing and creating...not dance or sports, but I moved sprinkler pipe on the farm and suffered my way through PE classes in school. I guess I just had a good metabolism.
When I got married at age 20, I fit into my sister's bridesmaid dress (she was 14 at the time). I remember as a newlywed that if I sucked in, Todd was able to put his hands around my waist and his fingers could touch.
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| August 1998 |
After my second, I struggled for over a year with post-partum depression. I lost all but 10-15 lbs this time, but I was fine with it. I am blessed with a husband who loves me for who I am. My weight doesn't matter to him, and I think because of that, it didn't really matter to me. My weight didn't change who I was, and I had better things to worry about--like my mental health.
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| April 2003 |
I think it was somewhere in this time that my thyroid levels started to plummet, although it took me four more years to figure it out. After I had Dillon, I didn't lose a pound. In fact, by the time he was a few weeks old, I had gained another ten. This was a stressful time for our family. Todd was finishing up his thesis and getting ready to graduate, but USU denied us any more student loans, so we were basically living on credit cards to pay our bills. Todd worked three different jobs, and I was quilting, but we just weren't making it. We qualified for housing and food assistance, and that kept us going.
I don't want to get onto my soapbox here about food stamps, but I will tell you that the amount we were given was obscene. We could afford to eat ANYTHING we wanted but couldn't pay our bills. If we didn't use up our food money, it rolled over to the next month. (If the government wants to know where to cut funds, I can sure tell them.) Our food allowance was double what I spend now to feed our family of growing boys. At the time, it was nice, because even though we couldn't afford to eat out, or go to a movie, we could splurge on food. I remember eating Ben & Jerry's for every date night, and eventually I think I learned to cope with my financial stress by splurging on food.
I think it was a combination of the stress and subsequent hormone imbalance, and the newly formed "food addiction" (that I didn't even recognize) that got me to where I am now.
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| November 2005 |
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| October 2008 |
At that time, I had every intention of losing more weight. I had my gallbladder out, and I was feeling good. Todd was content with his job, and we were slowly but surely plugging along...comfortably.
And then, as you know, Todd lost his job. He moved into a travel trailer three hours away and came home on weekends, while I played "single mom" and tried to sell our house. My "good intentions" of losing more weight were lost in the stress of that time. I watched my friends slowly move away and start their "new lives" while I waited for answers. I mindlessly endulged in treats and my beloved Dr. Pepper almost daily, thinking that I deserved it, and it was somehow "helping me get through". When we finally sold our house and moved, I was almost back up to my delivery weight.
Moving brought a new start. I was thrilled to get settled, live in a warm climate, and to have my family all under one roof. As soon as I got the bulk of the boxes unpacked, I joined Curves and started exercising. In a matter of three months, I had GAINED six pounds, and it wasn't muscle.
This is when I first started to feel "out of control". I was so sure that as soon as I started exercising the pounds would melt away. And they didn't. For the first time in my life I truly understood that if I wanted to lose weight, I was going to have to change the way I was eating. I still liked healthy foods, as always, but my portions were huge. For the past several years I had become accustomed to eating for comfort, and I liked the feeling of being stuffed.
Even though I didn't like the way I looked (and had been avoiding cameras for several years), I found myself so addicted to the comfort I found in food that I didn't even WANT to change my eating habits. When I was faced with a decision of what to eat, I ate whatever I wanted with the intention of eating better "tomorrow".
The problem is, "tomorrow" never came. There's always another tomorrow.
When I started struggling with depression again last fall, I knew I needed to make some changes. I was running on "empty" and desperately needed to do something for myself. I considered taking a class, but I was already stressed to the max and needed to simplify--not add one more thing to my plate. For weeks I pondered what to do. I finally came to the conclusion that the very best thing I could do for myself, for my health, my sanity, and my hormones, was to lose weight. The only problem was that I didn't want to do what it would take.
That is when I started to pray. I prayed for help to WANT to lose weight. I had no doubt in my mind that I could do it, but only if I wanted it. For two months, and through two fast Sundays I prayed for the desire to lose weight. How I looked was not enough motivation for me.
Slowly, my prayers started to work. I started noticing that at social functions I was the biggest girl in the room (when I used to be one of the smallest). How did I let myself get to that place? I recalled something that Todd learned when he went to a conference last summer. It was on addiction, and the changes it makes in your brain. The focus at this conference was mainly pornography addiction, but it also covered drugs, gambling, over-eating, and more. He learned that in an MRI, the brain of a person who over-eats looks the same as a the brain of a person who has a pornography addiction. Your brain actually gets "re-wired" and you are less able to make good decisions.
This bothered me. I could handle the way I looked...as long as I didn't have to see myself in too many pictures, but to know that my over-eating could actually re-wire my brain, and was possibly the cause of so much of my "brain fog" was the start of my desire to do better. Heavenly Father had blessed me with a body, and I was not taking care of it the way I should.
For the first time in my life, I started to feel the desire to lose weight. Not the wish (because I've wished the pounds would go away for years), but the true desire to sacrifice something good, for something better.
I tell you all this incredibly long story of my weight gain, not looking for sympathy, but to show how I got to this place. There were many factors that led to my weight gain, and many of them were valid reasons. My mistake was in assuming there was nothing I could do about it, and being content with that.
The family picture below will serve as my "before" picture. My sis-in-law took it over Christmas break and my weight was at an all time high (two pounds more than the day I delivered Justin). I wish I had thought to have her take a picture of me by myself, but this will have to do.
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| January 2013 |
Truthfully, I don't know if I would have started "today" on my own. I will forever be grateful for Becky's suggestion that we start that very day. We went to Iggy's for lunch, and while we were there, I pulled out my new iPhone, brought up the MyFitnessPal app, and started recording my calories.
Six weeks later, I am down ten pounds. A whole sack of potatoes...gone.
And I have no intention of stopping.
