40 pounds down

I am going to tell it raw ladies and gentlemen. I often hear weight loss stories where the person leaves out the actual weight in pounds out of it. I feel to come clean I must tell it all.

To be able to fully share my weight loss story, I am going to have to give a little history.

Lets begin when I got married.

November 5, 2005

140lbs

Not too bad for spending a year at college and eating Taco Bell every night. When I graduated high school I think I weighed around 130 or so. (Keep in mind that I am 5'8'')

It all went down hill from there.

When I got married I got the depo shot. Its a birth control shot that is supposed to last 3 months and is also pretty much guaranteed to make you gain 15-20lbs.

I thought, "Oh, I'll be fine. I won't gain any weight."

yeah right.

Within those first few months I rapidly gained 20lbs.

May 2006

160 lbs.

Not too bad, but not too good either. The worst is yet to come...

I got pregnant.

Throughout the first part of my pregnancy I really didn't gain that much weight. Probably because I had just gained 20 lbs. It didn't get ugly until my last trimester.

WAAA BAMM

April 2007

pushing 195 lbs.

Everyone told me not too worry about the weight gain. They even said after I had my baby I would just pee it all off.

Yea, that never happened.

So I gave birth to an 8lb 5oz baby boy on May 3, 2007.

I remember weighing myself at the hospital after I had Bransen and the scale read 175lbs. I thought, "Not bad. Have a baby, loose 20 lbs." Unfortunately that was all the weight that I would loose for 6 months.

June 2007

175 lbs.

Now don't get me wrong, I did TRY too loose the weight. Some mornings I would get up at 6:00am and run to the high school, run a mile on the track and then run back home.

I was just missing one thing: CONSISTENCY.

I yoyo dieted. I sporadically worked out. Nothing worked, so I sorta gave up for a while. Then I saw this picture.

August 2007

180 lbs.

Here I am at my best friend Dian's wedding. The sad thing about this is that I truly and honestly didn't think it was that bad until I saw this. I am sure there is some kind of psychological thing that happens to a person when they gain weight. It like you really don't see it (or see how bad it really is) and somehow you are able to rationalize it. My excuse was, "I just had a baby."

But time was marching on and I wasn't going to be able to use that excuse any longer.

I joined weight watchers and began getting back into the weight loss game.

Then the unthinkable happened.

I got pregnant.

My baby was only 5 1/2 months old and I was going to have ANOTHER baby?!?!

I was finally on the track to loose weight and here I found myself unable to loose weight because I had to grow another human being? Son of a.....

July 2008

toppling the scale at 200lbs.

The funny thing about this pregnancy was that I was ACHING to workout hard the entire time I was pregnant. I gained a healthy amount of weight this time and really controlled myself much more this time around.

On August 6, 2008 I gave birth to a healthy 6 lbs. 9 oz. baby girl.

September 2008

185 lbs.

This marks the beginning of the end. The end to a fat unhealthy me and the beginning of a happier better looking me!

The minute I was cleared by my doctor at my 6 week checkup I was signed back up at weight watchers. Within the first 2 weeks I had lost 10 lbs.

You may wonder what the difference was this time around. I have thought long and hard about that. I think that the change in me this time was all mental. Somehow I had lost myself and my motivation. Looking back on it, I was not in a happy place in my life. I felt out of control and had no idea how to begin to fix it. It took a mental change for me too see my way out. I realized how many fantastic people love and care for me. I found my fan club (via facebook) and realized if all these people can love me, why can't I love me enough to do this for myself?

WAA BAMM. Welcome back self confidence.

In November my dear husband bought me an elliptical machine.

I worked my butt off. Literally. 45 min per day 5 days a week.

February 2009

165 lbs.

I am not going to lie and say that I was a machine and worked out like crazy. I didn't. There were weeks that would pass that I didn't make or find the time to workout. To error is human, and I am all that and then some.

May 2009

155 lbs.

As time went on it all got easier. I no longer dreaded working out, in fact I look forward to it. If I miss a workout I literally feel awful, yucky and gross. The time has finally arrived. I have finally become a self motivated workout queen.

And the results speak for themselves, no?

October 2009

145 lbs.

Now I'm not going to tell you that I am finished with my weight loss journey. I am getting closer to my goal weight, but I am not there quite yet. In the beginning it felt impossible to get where I am today, but I have the absolute confidence that I will get there.

I am also not going to tell you that what worked for me will work for anyone else, but I will tell you that there are no magic pills, no magic machines and no magic. Period.

Weight loss is HARD. It's uncomfortable. It hurts. Sometimes it just plain sucks. But my theory is that if it wasn't all those things it wouldn't be worth it.