|
Week 3 mini-challenge:
I wasn't sure when I first saw this assignment what it meant. I wished there had been an example posted. For me the directions were too vague. Write my story? Starting when? Focused on what exactly? My motivation? My goal(s) and progress? My obstacles, fears, strengths? My life before and after Fatsecret? So I am not really sure if I am answering the question in the way the challenge intended, but here is my best stab at it.
I am 26. I've been married almost five years to a great guy,Jason. He's my best friend. Sometimes he drives me crazy, I know likewise sometimes I can do the same for him. We have this uncanny ability to affect one another more deeply than any other person we know- lamentably both for the worse as well as the better.
Anyways, Jas is the one who first got me involved in nutrition. He has this amazing knack for being able to hyper focus and also really study a subject when it piques his interest. For a while he hadn't been happy about his health. He tends to get sick, or be sickly frequently. He had become less active over the years from having a stationary desk job. (Previously he had worked in a related IT position where he was a field tech and drove around a lot more.) Though the biggest motivation for him wound up being the results of a blood test our doctor ordered as part of routine lab work. He had very high cholesterol. The doctor said he was obese and that he needed to lose weight or else he could have severe health issues later on down the road. Now Jas is the kind of person who is grateful for modern medicine, but he likes relying on it as little as possible. He wanted to see if he could help his situation by nutrition and exercise before resorting to a prescription medication to reduce his cholesterol. So back in February he started his quest, researching on diet changes and exercise methods to get in shape. He radically changed his habits and started getting into weight lifting. Though not yet at his goal he has seen a lot of benefits from these changes including, among other things, a successful drop down to normal cholesterol ranges. Knowing that he was more likely to see his goal realized if he 'buddied up' and wanting to establish more shared activities he began soliciting my participation.
Perhaps this is more where my story starts. I had never really felt great about my body. I had depression as a teenager and consequently was on antidepressants for my teen years. I know that advertisements for drugs like Paxil and Prozac and other antidepressant medications generally say that side effects may include loss of appetite and weight, but that was never the case for me. Sure I was drowsy and some of the meds that I took gave me a flat affect which I hated, but I seemed to always have the weight gain side effect they mention rather than the weight loss. In fact, as a late teen on anti depressants I was the heaviest I'd ever been in my life. I was almost 200lbs. I hated myself. I felt sloppy and fat, but had no energy or motivation to change it.
Somehow (by the grace of G-d for sure) I managed to make a turn around. I got and was holding down a full time job. I was able to move out on my own with some friends. I went to college for a little while, but poor judgment on my part cost me my financial aid eligibility. I had to drop out since I couldn't afford not working while work and school was too much for me. (Also I didn't want to take out a loan that I wasn't sure I could pay off.) Coincidentally I first met Jason in the last class I was able to complete in college.
We got married in December of 2005. I ended up losing the job I had had in 2006 and held some other short term jobs here and there up til Spring of 2008. That is when I became a first time mom. Since then I have been a stay at home wife and mother for a little over two years. Even being nine months pregnant I never weighed more than 185lb, and I only put on about 35 pounds during the time I was pregnant. I felt fairly good about the way I ate then. I'd force myself to eat more vegetables and strived to be in good shape for my baby's sake. I didn't have cravings for junk food, actually the only craving I had at all was for chick peas/ garbanzo beans. I think I polished off two economy sized (110oz) cans basically on my own, each over the course of 2-4 days.
Since having my little girl I've tended to eat more like when I was pregnant. I never really worried about it too much because I saw that I ate healthy foods for the most part and was fortunate enough to lose all the pregnancy weight before my daughter's first birthday. However, I realize that unless I change my habits I WILL get big again, maybe a la my depressed teen years. I don't want that. So my husband's enthusiasm has really given me the motivation and encouragement to buckle down and get into a good, not-pregnant shape. My husband helped me determine my goal weight of 130lb based on what would be a healthy BMI for me. He's helped me establish a workout routine, and is basically my personal trainer.
My husband even made a special journal for me to keep track of my exercise progress. (It's an ordinary little composition notebook that he pasted a picture of our cat on the cover along with the title, 'Jacquie's exercise journal', and the caption, 'Shadow [our cat] is watching you lose weight.') It's really simple, but it's cute and special to me because he took the time to make it and put a guide on the inside cover about how to work out and what my goals are.
Almost without exception he's helped me get into a routine of working out for about an hour three times a week with cardio and resistance training. He keeps telling me how impressed he is with my form on the weight exercises. I have trouble accepting this because I just think I'm not doing anything special, I'm trying to follow the directions he gives me for how to use the equipment. I started doing rows at 30lbs and leg presses/ calf extensions at 70lb resistance and can now do sets of 12 reps ea with 60lb resistance on the rows and 100lbs on the leg presses/calf extensions. (I first started working out the beginning of June and have only missed one week- due to my husband's recovery from oral surgery.) My favorite part of working out though has to be cardio. I love using the exercise bike. There's a giddy thrill to realizing that I can cycle fast enough on the bike to be ticketed for speeding in a hospital zone. :P I am trying to keep my speed up during the whole 30 minute bike workout that I do. I've managed to get to the point where I think I stay consistently above 14mph for the whole workout. That is getting easier, but it's still not a cake walk because at about 10 minutes into the workout the resistance is on 6 or 7 out of 10 and I am trying to maintain an increasingly higher speed without burning myself out too soon.
I have a long road ahead of me, but that's where I'm at right now.
|
156.0 lb
Lost so far: 3.0 lb.
Still to go: 26.0 lb.
Diet followed reasonably well.
|
gaining 3.5 lb a week
|