A short background... All my life I was active. I took ballet and tap from the time I was three years old and continued dancing until my college years. The reason I stopped dancing is a whole other story its self. I'm 5'11" and have always been a bigger person. There were about two glorious years, while I was marching with the band in college, that I was totally fit.
Here I am in my best physical condition... about five years ago when I was 21. Two years later I met my husband. I had not been dancing for almost two years, but I was still pretty fit. Here is a picture of AJ, me and our parents a month before we got married in 2009. I was also working out almost every day to prepare for our wedding day.
Still looking and feeling great as far as I was concerned. Coincidentally, my parents (on the left side) have both dropped a ton of weight now and look great. I'm so proud of them. The first six months AJ and I were married I was able to maintain a healthy weight for my height. Close to our one year anniversary I started to slowly gain weight. Mainly, I thought, due to my inactivity and just being happy. I've heard that a person gains weight when they are happy!
At first the weight gain was slow. Then between September 2010 and September 2011 I gained 30 to 40 pounds. Mixed in that year AJ and I completely uprooted our lives and moved to Memphis for him to go to school. (So glad we did!) In September 2011, I stopped taking birth control. (TMI? So sorry!) A couple of months passed and NO CYCLE. I've always had irregular cycles so it was no big deal... at first. Fast forward to May 2012 and still NO cycle. Also, I've only continued to gain weight. Tipping the scale at almost 250 pounds! I made an appointment to see a doctor. After blood work and an ultra sound it is determined that I have PCOS. Poly-cystic Ovary Syndrome involves and can mess up so many things with your body. I won't bore you with all the details. I'll just mention that PCOS is why I wasn't having monthly cycles... because it totally messes with a persons hormones which can totally mess up a persons metabolism which can cause a person to gain a ton of weight if gone undetected. ::sigh::
(This is me shortly after we arrived in Memphis. Getting bigger...)
So after I was given the diagnoses and immediately began thinking of fertility... or infertility. I began reading and reading. It is possible for a woman to become pregnant with PCOS with the help of different medications. Well, at the time AJ and I weren't interested in becoming pregnant so I determined within myself that I was going to correct my PCOS symptoms with weight loss. I've read that sometimes just losing 5 to 7% of you body weight can correct some of the symptoms.
(Here I am, tallest in the middle, at my heaviest back in June 2012. I had actually already started training but not showing a change yet.)
That week I signed up with a personal trainer at the local gym and began changing my diet. I started training at 237 pounds. At my first weigh-in, almost 6 weeks later, I was still at 237. However, my body fat % had gone down and my muscle mass % had gone up. I was showing some promise. At my second weigh-in I was at 226!! I had lost 11 pounds!! I couldn't believe it. I had also shed 4 inches off of my waist alone. I had my trainer measure twice because I just couldn't believe it. I was ecstatic. Losing 11 pounds gave me the boost of confidence and belief that I needed. Just two days after that weigh-in, AJ had a long break from school, two weeks. Thats two weeks away from home, away from the gym, eating out and little to no control over what I was eating.
That brings me to right now. August has been a bust for sure. I am just hoping I am at the same weight I was at when I weighed in at the beginning of August. I think I gained back two or three pounds though. There isn't another break from school until the middle of December. That's over three months of continuous hard core exercise and eating the right foods! I've set a huge goal of thirty pound by January 1st. I can totally do it.
So that's [part] of my story and I'm sticking to it. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far, ha ha! I'll be back with an update after I weigh-in tomorrow.
**Update** Just as I suspected. My weigh-in results are only a minor set back, though. Ready to hit the gym hard.
No comments:
Post a Comment