Fitness Journey: #1

So, I think the best place to start is by telling you when I decided to make a change (AKA start my fitness journey) and why I decided to do it. To do this, we have to go back to the spring of 2015. I was just one year out of college, living back home, and just a few months into a new job. It was about that time of year that I needed to set up my appointment with my “lady doctor.” I was dreading it! Not because it was the lady doctor, but because going to the doctor always meant having to get on a scale. For some time now I had been overweight, this was something I knew. I had gained weight over several years and thought I knew it was happening. I honestly didn’t notice how much I had gained. How could I not know, you ask? Well, any time I went to the doctor, I simply didn’t look at the scale. I didn’t want to know. Part of it was because I assumed the number had gone up, but also because I believed that you are not your weight, and whatever the scale said was not who I WAS. When I went up a size in shirt, I blamed it on my boobs, they were big and always growing. A few days before I had to actually call and set up the appointment, I was watching a TV show called “My Big Fat Fabulous Life” on TLC. Whitney, the main person the show revolves around, had recently had her A1C tested and found out she was pre-diabetic. This hit me, because I knew that members of my family were also diabetic or pre-diabetic. After watching the show, I decided I was going to ask my doctor if I could get my A1C tested at my appointment and see where I was at.

The day of my appointment came and I had my A1C tested. To be pre-diabetic, your A1C levels run between 5.7 -6.4. My numbers were just below that. My doctor had “the talk” with me about how if I continued down the path I was on and gaining weight, I could become pre-diabetic. This SUCKED! I was only 23 years old, this was not the news I wanted. But, I was the one who wanted to know one way or another. I wanted to know because I had already decided I should work on my health and this was my first step. I knew if you had diabetes, you process sugars (including sugars in fruit) differently, so if I was diabetic, I needed to know because my diet was going to be different than if I didn’t have diabetes. Though I was defeated knowing I was so close to being pre-diabetic, I was also more ready then I had ever been before to make a change. Some people might be thinking…”okay, right then and there I made big changes”… sorry, you would be wrong!

I mentally had to prepare myself and come up with a game plan. I believe losing weight is just as much about your mentality as it is about your actions. So, I took time to really convince myself I could do this and I would succeed. I knew I needed to come up with a plan of action. There were four initial plans or goals I decided on. The 1^st was moving out; I was not going to be successful living at home. I had bad habits there and I needed a change. The 2^nd thing I decided on was that I was NOT going to go on any fad diets or do anything extreme. I had tried losing weight before. Sometimes it worked, others times it didn’t. The 3^rd thing was that I was going to have a goal of how much I wanted to lose, but I was NOT only going to focus on my weight. I wanted to focus on my sleep, my energy levels, how my clothes fit, and just how I felt throughout the day, also. The last thing I decided was that as I did lose weight (remember I was determined to make this happen), I was going to throw away my clothes once they were too big for me. This was huge, because I hated spending money, especially on clothes (I know as a girl that’s weird, whatever). There were two reasons I decided this needed to be one my plans of action; 1^st was because I read that if you keep your “big girl” clothes, you are mentally giving yourself an okay to gain the weight back, 2^nd was because I wanted to reward myself for my hard work that I was putting in by getting rid of the old and buying new things.

Now that I had somewhat of a plan in place, I needed to start taking action. In November 2015, I took a big step and I moved out. I moved out right before Thanksgiving, my birthday and Christmas.   It was a busy month and a half, to say the least. With that in mind, I decided that I was truly going to start my fitness journey right away in January of 2016. This was going to be the New Year’s resolution I kept! So, I enjoyed the holidays with family, got used to living somewhere new, and continued to mentally prepare for 2016. This was the year I was going to make a lifestyle change. As the year came to an end, there was only one thing left to do… the final weigh in. I needed to know where I was starting from. I left 2015 at 280 pounds and vowed to NEVER get to that weight again.