I Gave Up Dt. Coke For This!

I’m going to do something that makes me a little bit nervous. I’m going to talk to you about my weight. So scary! And rather random, but random pretty much describes me, right? So here’s the story. I just started some new exercise DVDs that I am super excited about, and when I am super excited about something I blab about it, a lot, to anyone who will listen. But before I tell you about them, here is more history than you ever wanted to know about me and my weight.

For most people, they are in the best shape of their lives in high school, when young metabolisms and lots of activities help even out the junk that teenagers are notorious for eating. For me, I was in my best shape right after high school. I was working in retail in a job where I walked for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. One of my best friend’s sisters taught an aerobics class in the morning at their local church for free, so I was there almost every day. (My love of free is definitely not new!)

And then everything changed. Within the space of a year I went from my active job to one where I sat all day. I had moved too far away to be able to go to the aerobics class anymore, so I just quit exercising all together. Since I had no clue how to cook and there was only me to cook for, I bought a ton of fatty processed frozen meals and lived off of those until Marquis and I got married, and then I started eating his food. Marquis’s food has gotten a lot healthier over the years, but he is rather notorious for being able to take a healthy meal and add enough butter, bacon, cream and cheese to make you feel like you need to call a cardiologist afterwards. But wow, is it ever good! I also went on birth control pills about the same time. All these things together added up to about 50 pounds over the next 2 years. Ouch! By then we were trying for a baby, and while I tried to exercise and eat good things, I didn’t try too hard because if I was pregnant, the baby would need me to eat, right? I even had several doctors tell me that one reason I might not be getting pregnant was the weight, but I didn’t pay much attention because I knew plenty of people heavier than me who had no problem at all getting pregnant, why would my few extra pounds stop me? I had that mindset for years and years, and it wasn’t until I got pregnant before I realized how completely wrong I was, because it really was the weight that was getting in the way. About 6-1/2 years after we started trying for a baby, and about 3 or 4 years after I had completely given up on it ever actually happening to me, I decided that I looked like a frumpy mom who had given birth 10 times already, and there was no reason for me to look that way. I read a book that changed my life forever, French Women Don’t Get Fat. I’ll probably dedicate a whole post to this book later, but that’s all I will say for now. Using this book and some fun exercise DVDs I dropped 30 pounds. And amazingly, certainly monthly womanly things became very regular, until one day it didn’t come at all and I got the biggest surprise of my life.

I did tell you it would be more history than you ever wanted to know, sorry! Anyway, during my pregnancy with Sweetheart, although I did really well at keeping up with my exercise, I stopped paying attention to what I ate and I gained back all the weight I had lost. I didn’t worry too much because I had heard that breastfeeding was the best way to get the baby weight back off. Ha!!! For most women out there, maybe, but I get to be one of those lucky girls who can and will gain weight while breastfeeding. When I was done nursing and it was time to start trying again, I was able to get the weight off pretty quickly again and getting pregnant was much easier now that I knew what I needed to do to make my body work correctly. I gained the weight back with Princess, too, and didn’t loose after just by nursing her, either. When she turned a year old I started exercising again and doing better at watching what I put in my mouth, and because of that, even though I am still nursing, I have lost 25 pounds. Go me!!

But here is the problem. For exercise I have been doing a rotation between yoga, pilates and cardio. My exercise DVDs were old, and I had done each one about a bazillion times. I was very, very bored. My weight loss plateaued during the holidays, and I started looking for something new to do, something that would keep me entertained, and something that would be more challenging than what I had. And I definitely found it.

And because this post is long enough, I’m going to leave you with a bit of a cliffhanger. Here’s what I will tell you, I’m 10 days in and down 3 more pounds. It’s HARD, I sweat like a pig and I love every second of it. I love it so much that I gave up Dt. Coke to pay for it, and so far I haven’t regretted that choice.

More to come soon!