Up and Down and all around!!!

I promised in my first post that I would share my weight loss journey on this blog. I want accountability and feel like if I blog about it, that maybe it might be a great way to be accountable. I also know that my trainer will be reading this too, since I sent the blog to her as well:)

My weight issues started when I was a teenager. I wasn't fat by no means, but I was never a size 0-2 like most of my classmates and like my sisters. I was always bigger. Size 8-10 clothes were always what I wore. What I wouldn't do right this moment to be in them again. It is funny how the further we go in life, things take on a new perspective.

Well, as I went to college, I put on the usual college weight. I went up a size. I was getting married though, so I had to do my best to fit into the wedding gown. I was stressed working all the time, taking 20 hours of school and planning a wedding. I started eating chips and a diet coke for lunch everyday. It was all I was eating. I would go back and grab something quick for supper and go about my business. I was so busy that I lost weight and fit into my dress nicely.

After getting married, I quit caring. Sure there were times I would try and loose weight. I did Slim Fast, or Atkins, or whatever the latest craze, but it never lasted. I was at my heaviest in that point in my life right before I became pregnant with the boys. Twins did nothing great for my figure. After they were born, I nursed them and the weight flew off quicker than quick. I was smaller than I had been in high school. It didn't last. I started drinking Vanilla Cokes in the can like they were water. The weight came back and I stopped nursing the boys by the time they were fourteen months.

I went back and forth, up and down. Then I got pregnant again. I was determined this time any weight I lost after our daughter was born, would stay off. The weight started to come off but there is a difference in nursing one baby and nursing two. It eventually quit coming off.

The sizes kept going up through all of this. I have found that if I am not willing to admit what size I am, then I am just denying that it has happened. Last summer, before I started working out, I weighed 232 lbs, and was starting to buy clothes that were size 18. I can't believe I just said that or posted that, but I have! No one ever believes that it is so, because I guess I have hid some of it pretty well; and my trainer also says it is my height at almost 6 feet that helps. But it is the case.

I started working out with a trainer in the end of July. We have had times of going at it strong, and then, as some of you know, I am accident prone, so our time was not so strong. I have been sick several times, burned my arm really bad, fell at my sister's wedding and screwed up my leg, hit the lip of a sidewalk and skinned my knees and so on. I don't have the best luck sometimes:)

Right before Christmas we measured and weighed again to start the official counter for the new year. I had lost 15 inches since we started; I was pumped!!!! My weight had been down when I started training with her, she never saw 232. But since that time my heaviest, I have lost 22 pounds.

It is not noticeable to me yet. It has been a gradual change (My trainer, Paula, assures me this is the key to lasting weight loss). I wish that I could fast forward and be the forty pounds lighter that I want to be right now. But I know that I am working on it. I know that my size 14 clothes are getting really close to fitting again. I know that the size 10 - 12 shorts I have in my closet from years ago will soon fit again. I know that I am doing something for myself that will pay dividends into my future. I know that I may be sick now for admitting to all of you how much I weigh...But I hope that it gives each of you hope, that if I can slowly change my life, you can too!!!