Howdy howdy!
It has been a while since I've posted (I've been busy busy) but I wanted to give y'all an update.
My original, semi-short term goal was to lose 50lbs by my sister's wedding. Well, the wedding is two weeks away, and I'm sad to say I won't be hitting my goal.
HOWEVER! I am extremely proud to say that I am officially 30lbs down from when I started in February. Just being able to write that sentence makes me want to happy dance.
I had to stop going to zumba because I was unexpectedly asked to teach a class that was on the same nights as zumba. I've yet to reestablish a new exercise routine, so the weight loss has stalled. Note that I said stalled, not stopped.
I've also gotten a little lazy on my carb restriction, which I'm not too happy with myself over. I'm pretty sure that if I'd kept up with it, I would still be trickling down the pounds.
But, I'm still really happy with the progress I've made.
My new goal is to reach my one year mark (so around February) 50lbs lighter. I know, without a doubt, that if I can start February at 260lbs, I will be very proud of myself.
Here's to long term weight loss, and keeping it off long term.
Once the wedding is over and things quiet down I'll try to post more often. :)
Friday, September 12, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
This isn't the beginning...
Welcome to this little journey of mine.
Regretfully, I'm not starting with you at the beginning of the road. You're jumping in a few months in to the story. However, we haven't gone far, so I should be able to catch you up pretty quickly.
The road so far (for you Supernatural fans out there):
I'm a big girl. I've always been a big girl. At my thinnest (in high school) I was wearing a size 12-14, even though I was pretty active in softball and marching band (which doesn't sound that impressive, until you consider that I marched a bass drum, so I spent 5 afternoons a week with a 40-50lb drum strapped to my chest).
I left for college, got married, did the grad school thing, and came home much heavier. Fast forward to any time in 2013-2014. I'm about 25 years old, wearing a size 24 pants, XXL shirt and weighing in at about 310lbs. This is the heaviest I've been in my life.
My husband and I have been trying to get pregnant since 2010, but due to some personal issues we were having problems. After rounds of testing and lots and lots of doctor's visits (which you can read about on my infertility blog, if you're so inclined) I learned that I had a disease called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, or PCOS. I also found out that I was clomiphene resistant (the medication typically used to help women with PCOS get pregnant), and that if my husband and I wanted to have children, our best hope would be IVF.
For those of you who don't know, IVF costs around $8,000-12,000 out of pocket (because infertility treatments are not covered by insurance). Because of this, two things happened nearly simultaneously. My husband and I talked about it, and decided that if we were going to move forward with IVF it would take us about 2-3 years to save up the money and, if we were going to invest that amount of time and money into an elective procedure, we were going to be in the best health we could be...meaning I needed to lose some weight.
The other thing that happened is I started researching PCOS. During the infertility treatments, I didn't really take the time to aggressively research PCOS sooner because I was too busy trying to research the infertility meds I was on and the treatments we were going through. Trust me, it was a full time job thrown on top of my actual full time job.
What I discovered was that the hormone imbalances caused by PCOS both make it difficult to lose weight and put me at a significantly higher risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. If I hadn't already decided to lose weight, this alone would have been the wake up call I needed. I was sufficiently freaked.
I learned that women with PCOS tend to have a lot of success with low carb and ketogenic style diets. I took the time to really examine my food intake. I wasn't a fast food junkie. I didn't pig out on candy. I didn't guzzle soda like it was going out of style. No. My sin was carbs. I LOVE carbs. Buttery yeast rolls, cornbread, pasta, macaroni and cheese, any kind of potato *drools*
But carbs did not love me. The more I read, the more I learned that eating all of those carbs alone would have put me in a diabetes danger zone due to the necessary insulin spike to digest all of the carbs I loved to eat at every meal. And with my PCOS as well, I was eating myself to a very bad place.
So, one day in February (I think it was right smack in the middle of the week) I boxed up EVERY carb I had in the house. All pasta, potatoes, rice, breads, rolls, EVERYTHING and gave them away. My husband wasn't too happy about it, but he also understood that I wasn't willing to risk my health any more.
A week or two later I found out about a zumba class in my area that was very inexpensive and open to beginners. My sister, who has been amazingly supportive, joined the class with me to start losing weight for her September wedding. The class meets twice a week for an hour each class, and only costs $20 for the whole month. Quite a steal in my opinion.
So, here we are at the beginning of May. I've been going to Zumba for just over 2 months, have cut out a ton of carbs and made a concentrated effort to switch to mostly plant-based carbs (like fruit and veggies), and I've lost 18 pounds! My short-term goal is to lose 50 total by my sister's wedding in September, so I still have 32 pounds and 4 and a half months to go, which seems totally possible.
Now you know my story. You have a little bit of an idea of where I'm coming from. My long-term goal is to get down to 150 pound, which would put my BMI in the "normal" range for the first time in my life. Ultimately, that means I have 160 pounds to lose in total (or 142 to go).
I hope you're coming along for the ride as I journey to get to a place half my world away!
Regretfully, I'm not starting with you at the beginning of the road. You're jumping in a few months in to the story. However, we haven't gone far, so I should be able to catch you up pretty quickly.
The road so far (for you Supernatural fans out there):
I'm a big girl. I've always been a big girl. At my thinnest (in high school) I was wearing a size 12-14, even though I was pretty active in softball and marching band (which doesn't sound that impressive, until you consider that I marched a bass drum, so I spent 5 afternoons a week with a 40-50lb drum strapped to my chest).
I left for college, got married, did the grad school thing, and came home much heavier. Fast forward to any time in 2013-2014. I'm about 25 years old, wearing a size 24 pants, XXL shirt and weighing in at about 310lbs. This is the heaviest I've been in my life.
My husband and I have been trying to get pregnant since 2010, but due to some personal issues we were having problems. After rounds of testing and lots and lots of doctor's visits (which you can read about on my infertility blog, if you're so inclined) I learned that I had a disease called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, or PCOS. I also found out that I was clomiphene resistant (the medication typically used to help women with PCOS get pregnant), and that if my husband and I wanted to have children, our best hope would be IVF.
For those of you who don't know, IVF costs around $8,000-12,000 out of pocket (because infertility treatments are not covered by insurance). Because of this, two things happened nearly simultaneously. My husband and I talked about it, and decided that if we were going to move forward with IVF it would take us about 2-3 years to save up the money and, if we were going to invest that amount of time and money into an elective procedure, we were going to be in the best health we could be...meaning I needed to lose some weight.
The other thing that happened is I started researching PCOS. During the infertility treatments, I didn't really take the time to aggressively research PCOS sooner because I was too busy trying to research the infertility meds I was on and the treatments we were going through. Trust me, it was a full time job thrown on top of my actual full time job.
What I discovered was that the hormone imbalances caused by PCOS both make it difficult to lose weight and put me at a significantly higher risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. If I hadn't already decided to lose weight, this alone would have been the wake up call I needed. I was sufficiently freaked.
I learned that women with PCOS tend to have a lot of success with low carb and ketogenic style diets. I took the time to really examine my food intake. I wasn't a fast food junkie. I didn't pig out on candy. I didn't guzzle soda like it was going out of style. No. My sin was carbs. I LOVE carbs. Buttery yeast rolls, cornbread, pasta, macaroni and cheese, any kind of potato *drools*
But carbs did not love me. The more I read, the more I learned that eating all of those carbs alone would have put me in a diabetes danger zone due to the necessary insulin spike to digest all of the carbs I loved to eat at every meal. And with my PCOS as well, I was eating myself to a very bad place.
So, one day in February (I think it was right smack in the middle of the week) I boxed up EVERY carb I had in the house. All pasta, potatoes, rice, breads, rolls, EVERYTHING and gave them away. My husband wasn't too happy about it, but he also understood that I wasn't willing to risk my health any more.
A week or two later I found out about a zumba class in my area that was very inexpensive and open to beginners. My sister, who has been amazingly supportive, joined the class with me to start losing weight for her September wedding. The class meets twice a week for an hour each class, and only costs $20 for the whole month. Quite a steal in my opinion.
So, here we are at the beginning of May. I've been going to Zumba for just over 2 months, have cut out a ton of carbs and made a concentrated effort to switch to mostly plant-based carbs (like fruit and veggies), and I've lost 18 pounds! My short-term goal is to lose 50 total by my sister's wedding in September, so I still have 32 pounds and 4 and a half months to go, which seems totally possible.
Now you know my story. You have a little bit of an idea of where I'm coming from. My long-term goal is to get down to 150 pound, which would put my BMI in the "normal" range for the first time in my life. Ultimately, that means I have 160 pounds to lose in total (or 142 to go).
I hope you're coming along for the ride as I journey to get to a place half my world away!
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