This specific celebration was about reaching a certain weight at a certain time. When I was a little kid, I was practlly a stick. When I hit the age for puberty though, I gained a lot of weight. This was due to the stress of my family breaking up, moving across the country, and just normal hormonal teenager stuff. So I went from being a twig, to having stretch marks and "pudge" in various places all within a span of about 1 or 2 years. I'm sure all of you know this, but middle school is hard enough as it is without feeling self-conscious about being over weight. Even if you aren't that over weight anyways. Like I said, teenager stuff. This continued through high school, and although cheering kept my weight under control pretty well, there was always that extra 10 pounds that I wanted to lose, but never seemed to be able to drop.
Fast forward to freshman year of college (last year), and I was convinced that with a gym membership included in my University of Florida tuition to multiple gyms on campus, a gym at my apartment complex, and a car to get to any of those that I wanted, that I would be in the best shape of my life within just a couple of months. After all, it was just 10 pounds, right? Wrong. Pasta became the staple in my diet (Hey it was super cheap and easy to make), pizza became my late night meal of choice (with places delivering until 3am), and Krispy Kreme was my favorite breakfast and snack alike (Hot light App!). I also no longer had a scale like I did at home to try to keep myself in check, so without realizing it, I went from 125 pounds to 138-142 pounds, depending on the day. This may not sound like a huge amount, but start with the fact that I'm 5'1 with 10 pounds that I already wanted to get rid of, and tack on another 13-17 pounds and I wasn't looking or feeling very good. One downside to being short for sure is that weight gain shows drastically.
My clothes didn't fit anymore, I was swapping jeans for yoga pants (hey, everyone on campus wears them anyways), and I just didn't feel good about myself. One night on Pinterest, I came across Tone It Up and started learning about clean eating, and started jogging on the treadmill a couple of days a week. I started losing weight slowly. Then I started looking more into the eating aspect of weight loss and realized how much information there was and started getting discouraged, but tried staying on track and started juicing after seeing "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" on Netflix. This shed a few more pounds, and I was down to about 134. It was slow, but it was progress.
Over the summer, I went to Michigan to see family and friends, a vacation that lasted around a month. Although I brought some "clean food", the vacation packed every single pound that I had worked months to get off, right back on. When I got home and realized this, I honestly cried and almost quit. In fact, I did quit for about 3 weeks and just stopped caring. Then I got back with my TIU plan and started again. My stepmom Nicki had p90x sitting in her basement (where I stayed during my vacation), and I asked if I could borrow it, thinking this might be exactly what I needed to get on track. However, after learning that the workouts were an hour each and that I needed equipment, I decided to go another route. I had been seeing Instagram posts about T25 after I decided to follow a bunch of fitness profiles for inspiration. I knew that they were by the guy that did Insanity (which I had seen on infomercials), but that they were 25 minutes long, and all I needed was the resistance band which came with the program. My boyfriend and I split the cost and were working out with the program a week later. He knew how unhappy I was with myself, and had some goals of his own.
Not gonna lie, the first workouts kicked our butts...HARD. But they got a little easier as we went (although they are still not "easy" by any means), and I am now on the second phase of the program (after having to repeat a few weeks because of missed workouts and breaks). I also decided to buy Shakeology to see if I could get results faster like the commercials on the program say. About 2 weeks ago, I also joined a clean eating group with my Beachbody Coach Melanie Mitro. My goal was to be back in the 120 pound weight range by my 20th birthday, which is January 31st, and today when I stepped on the scale, I was at 129! This has been the first time in over a year that I have weighed this little, and it is a huge accomplishment for me. My ultimate goal weight is still 14 pounds away (115), but this was a goal for along the way, and I have reached it almost a month and a half early! So today is a day of celebration for me...a victory over my bad habits in a way that can be physically measured, and I couldn't be happier! I am so excited to see what I can do by the time my birthday does get here, and I finally turn 20 (wow, can't believe that's happening soon).
Thanks for reading!
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