What spurred this on? I am not completely sure but I can remember a combination of things:
- First, my little brother gave me his Wii. I bought Wii fit and started doing the free step for 10 min on the first day.
- Second, I stared watching Biggest Loser and realized that I was above some of the starting weights. Okay I was watching season 1 and they got much larger from there but still it freaked me out.
- Third, I had gone from wearing an 18 to having to buy size 20 jeans. I had been an 18 FOREVER like as long as I can remember. Surpassing that, for myself, was unacceptable.
- Fourth, I attended a wedding in June and a baby shower in July and saw the pics of me on Facebook and they were terrible.
Once I started I feel like my journey naturally broke itself into stages. Each stage had different eating and exercise.
Stage one. August through November-Finding what works for me
- At the very beginning I was too embarrassed to exersize in public so I did the Wii fit in my living room. I built up from my 10 min free step to 1 hour 45 min. At some point I bought the risers so it was more of a step up.
- The only diet that I had ever had success with was low(practically no) carb. When I did this in the past I felt so unhealthy and craved fruit. I decided that I would try to be as pure and healthy as possible at first and chose to eat only fruits and veggies. I know kind crazy and I would not recommend it but it helped me make a clean break from everything bad. I made huge fruit salads for breakfast, nice salads for lunch(I did allow dressing), dinner I had to get creative. I would do a plate of cut up veggies like coins of cucumber, baby carrots, a whole tomato, Spagetti squash, beets, canned green beans, roasted asparagus, I even tried an artichoke for dinner once that was a big fail:)
- For weigh ins I used the Wii fit, it prompts you to weigh in each time you do it and it charts both your weight and BMI. I loved seeing the chart show a downward slope I hated how long it took to calculate and how it said out loud "Thats Obese" each time. Eventually I bought a scale and began to use that as it was easier, even though it showed one pound higher than the Wii Fit did.
- Durring this time no one really knew I was working on losing weight. When you start at 245 it takes a lot of weight to be noticeable. A few of my coworkers knew what I was doing as they saw what I was eating and noticed that I always turned down food brought into the office. A few encouraged me one even gave me some workout DVDs for Zumba along with the maracas that come with the sculpt and tone workout. Integrating that with Wii Fit helped keep it interesting. I also bought a Biggest Loser walking DVD and added that to my routine.
- In October I slowly started to incorporate new foods. I thoughtfully added in Oatmeal and skim milk to my breakfasts and then sweet potatoes to my dinners. Also, in October as I was adding in new foods I knew I needed to track what I was eating. I believe that writing down what you eat is what makes Weight Watchers so successful but I did not want to give anyone money, I wanted to do this myself. I found Livestrong.com a free site to track your food. It also has a community to ask questions and post achievements. From here forward I slowly added in food while tracking my calories and weight loss.
- Throughout this time I was doing one "cheat" meal a week. Hey I was 24 and you still have to live so most times this was going out with friends and eating.
- The weekend after Thanksgiving I flipped my mattress and injured my back. It was so bad that I had to call in sick from work and went to the doctor. I got some pain pills and took 2 weeks off of workouts. Durring those 2 weeks I continued to diet and actually found that I lost weight. So even tho exersize helped I knew that I did not have to do as much as I was doing(1hr 45 min each day) I cut it down to 45 min on the Wii fit or a 50 min video everyday once I was feeling better.
- At the end of the year I had gotten from 245 to 202. My birthday is January 4th I really wanted to be under 200 by then but man was I close. This really made me feel bad at the time. Since then I decided to not put any deadlines for myself for pounds lost. In my opinion you can do everything right and the scale can still not fall where you want it when you want it. Instead I put goals on things I can control. I will work out everyday, I will have only one cheat meal a week, I will not drink my calories, I will track everything I eat and stay under my cal goals. These things I can control and it will pay off eventually just be patient.
- At the end of January, almost 6 months in, I joined the community rec center. It gave me the elliptical and treadmill I had been wanting to try as well as access to classes without being intimidating like I felt a private gym would be. This was a great resource to have in the cold days of winter.
- Durring this time work was super slow and I had been loving the use of Livestrong but was getting tired to the same opinions so I went in search of more information online and discovered the blogging world. I really came to love reading about others in different stages of their journeys. It took a long time of reading blogs before I felt the need to comment. I wanted to comment but not anonymously so thats what prompted me to start this blog. I may not be a great writing but its a resource to connect and share my experience even if it is only for a few and my future self.
- Pain-Since hurting my back in November it had began to increase in pain to the point were I looked into resources to help. I did not like how my doctor just gave me pills for my back and did not follow up with me so I wanted something that would fix the problem instead of covering it up.
- Chiropractor-What came to me was chiropractic care. I made an appointment and went. It seemed okay he took x-rays examined me and when I went back for results he showed me what was likely causing my pain and had a 3 week game plan for fixing it.
- Ok lets do this! He let me know that like braces moving your bones will cause some pain to begin with but then it will get better. Well I was in pain no joke. but I kept going I kept believing. Until it got so bad I could not walk my dog. I had broken down at least once with each of my parents and they sat me down and convinced me to go to a different doctor and get a different opinion.
- I thought I would give the chiropractor one more try and went in with a pad of paper and a pen and asked to just talk at my next apt. We sat down and I asked if he could give me the diagnosis and what the timeline and plan of action would be to get me out of pain. What he said was not good. He said it takes time and how he thought I was doing better. Thats when I broke down and couldn't believe what he was saying. I informed him as I had evry time I had gone in that I had never been in more pain in my life. That was my last chiropractic appointment forever. Maybe they are good for something but I believe he would have had me coming back week after week doing the something for as long as he could get money out of me.
- Physical Therepy-Thats when I went to a reg doctor, I found a new one and I guess she is good. She of course gave me pain pills-did not touch the pain, and a prescription for an x-ray and physical therapy. Oh yeah and a follow up appointment in 4 weeks to see f the PT was working-what an idea;).
- Well I went to PT twice a week for 3 weeks the 3rd time I was still in so much pain and broke down in the office because I had asked that they put my diagnosis and plan of action in writing so I can remember and convey it to my concerned parents and they would not. This scared me that I was again wasting my time.
- Anyway, after that time they decided the stretches and the physical pulling they were doing was not enough so the did this sonogram heat thing and deep tissue massage. OMG that was a miracle!!!! It changed my life! I could walk my dog. I took it so easy those few weeks I did not want to mess it up. Each week I felt better and better it has been 3 weeks at this point and I have done C25K, Zumba, hiked, Rode my bike, gone to a yoga class, and danced with joy!!!
- They are weaning me off of it now. I am so afraid to have it taken away I am tearing up writing this. It gave me my life back and I would buy the machine and pay for a masseuse at this point if it would keep me feeling the way I do. I still have some tightness but I foresee it only getting better!
- This whole time I only went from185 to 174. Wow what a waste of time. I which so much that I had gone straight to PT instead of wasting months at the chiropractor. How much further could I be now? Nothing I can do about that now, I can only go from where I am.
- I did learn alot during this time-
- I can be patient,
- I can find help when I need it,
- I can work through pain(I found that I could bike ride without much pain and did that as much as I could),
- I can control my diet most of the time while dealing with disappointment.
- Food wise I want to pretty much stay the same. I have found that cheat meals set me back so they are not worth it every week maybe everyother or maybe I can find a way to make them not cheat meals. Other than that I am okay with eating 1200-1300 cal a day and do not want to change that. I have always played around with the makeup of those calories and will continue to experiment that keeps it interesting.
- Excersize wise now that I am feeling better and I want to do stuff. You can't keep me from it. I plan to do something every day. I can take a rest day each week if I am hurting or feel I need to for time but just one. I hope that by the time the excitement over getting to move wanes it will already be a habit built into my day and will be automatic. I have started C25K thats 3 days a week, I'm took a yoga class Monday night. Maybe that can become a regular thing. I have prepaid for water aerobics classes before my back really got to its worst (yeah so bad could not do water aerobics) and I could ride that bike or go to the gym one day a week.
- When I got to 180lbs I had planned to start rollerblading I did it a few times and found it hurt my back so much I had to stop before I got anywhere near good. I had planned to go rollerblading on a vacation to Santa Monica but my back stopped both the rollerblading and the vacation from happening. Maybe sometime soon I can factor that in again.
