My Gigantic Challenge: Losing 40 lbs.

I recently made a discovery: I’m getting fat. Well, to be honest I didn’t recently make the discovery, I’ve been noticing it for quite some time now. It’s not as if it snuck up on me or something, but I always thought to myself “Aw! It’ll get better. I’m sure it will come back off like it used to.” HA!!! Yeah, apparently I have reached the age where that no longer happens. Those pesky little calories and fat cells decided that now that I am older my body makes a PERFECT place to set up camp and stay awhile!

See, I had been thin my entire life. When I was a child I would eat and eat and eat and still be as skinny as a rail. My grandmother thought for a while that I had a tape worm because I would never gain any weight no matter what I ate or how much. (Seriously, she wanted to take me to the doctor and have me checked out.)

As I got older and into my teen years I filled out a bit, but still was never what you would call curvy or anything. I didn’t really have an ass on me or hips for that matter. I was tall and thin. And that was ok with me for the most part. I never really worried about my weight or what I would eat. In fact in high school I would often eat 7-11 nachos and Slurpees for lunch instead of whatever the cafeteria was serving that day. I was a frequent visitor at the vending machine for candy and Mt. Dew. God bless having a kick ass metabolism in high school!

That metabolism carried on with me however into adulthood. In my twenties I would still eat absolute crap and didn’t gain any weight. In fact I recall a time when my uncle told me that I was too thin and that it worried him. I was a size 9 at that point, but because I was so tall I’m sure that I seemed thinner than I truly was.

During my pregnancy with my twin boys my weight shot up dramatically, as you would expect when you are carrying twins. It was the heaviest I had weighed in my entire life. The last time I allowed the nurse to weigh me I was at 215. I about had a heart attack! I had NEVER weighted that much in my life! I decided at that point that I was not going to be weighed any more during my pregnancy. In fact, I vividly remember telling a nurse that if she tried to make me get on that scale again I would put it somewhere very unpleasant for her. After that, my doctor didn’t make the nurse weigh me any more.

7 years later I had my daughter. Now that pregnancy was a little different – I only gained a total of 15 – 20 pounds with her and my doc was NOT happy. She was a total of 8 lbs 6 oz when she was born so most of that weight was baby weight. I didn’t even have to buy maternity clothes! This was mostly because I was working as a waitress, so I was always moving and on my feet AND because my boss at the time was a total jerk and wouldn’t let me eat during my shift. So I didn’t gain much weight at all. I was able to wear my jeans and such all through my pregnancy.

After I had her I went back down to my pre-baby weight again! Woo Hoo!!! Still just going along relying on that metabolism and fantastic genetics to make everything all better for me. And for years that is how it was. Still eating what I wanted, not paying attention to calories and not exercising at all! Just assuming that everything was going to keep going the way it was.

Then I lost my job as a waitress and started working from home sitting at a desk all day. And then I quit smoking. Then the weirdest thing happened – I gained a shit ton of weight! Well to me it seemed like a lot. I don’t regret quitting smoking at all, in fact I was totally willing to switch off a little weight gain to be able to walk away from those damn cigarettes. But I gained like 20 pounds! YIKES!

And for the last few years my weight has been going up and up and up…

As of today I weigh as much as I did when I was pregnant with my twins – and I am NOT happy about it. Not just because my clothes don’t fit anymore or because I am ashamed of my body or anything like that. I am not ashamed of anything really – but I know it isn’t healthy for me to weigh this much. It’s causing problems with my knees and I just feel blah! I don’t have the energy I used to have and I don’t like that at all.

So what do I do?

Well here’s the problem – I like food. I REALLY like food. I don’t like not being able to eat what I want, when I want. I don’t like feeling like I have to deny myself in order to lose weight. And THAT is the biggest part of my problem – well that and I have NO self control apparently.

So the training has been awesome and I am definitely getting stronger BUT still not losing weight. And that is totally and completely all my fault – because I am not watching what I eat or changing my eating habits. That is the hardest thing for me to do and maintain. I try to make the changes, but as I said before I LOVE food and I don’t like feeling like I can’t eat what I want.

I tried things like Weight Watchers and Nutrisystem… and those didn’t work. I fell off the wagon almost immediately – in fact I just got rid of a freezer full of Nutrisystem meals because I just couldn’t bring myself to eat them anymore. Not that they weren’t good – they were – I just hated that they were my only option. I have tried fads, pills and all sorts of other stuff and didn’t stick with a single one. I am a quitter. I quit – and that is why I am not losing weight.

So I have made the decision that I am going to put in the work with my trainer and do more at home to work out and exercise – AND change my diet. I have to go all in or things will never get better and I know it. It’s time to stop half ass-ing this weight loss thing and really work at it. So I am going to blog about the journey and my goals – my ups and downs, the successes and failures and put it out there for the world to see and use this to help keep myself accountable.

So here is the mission and goals:

My current weight: 215

My Goal Weight: 160 – 170 (which is the healthy weight for my height of 5’9″)

First mini goal: Lose 5 pounds and exercise 6 days out of the week.