WELCOME!

Welcome to my new blog! I am a working wife and mother who has recently lost about 40 pounds (36 to be exact). Many people have started asking me how I did it, so i figured I would start a blog in order to share what has made me successful. I am in no way perfect, nor am I a professional personal trainer or nutritionist. I am also still a work in progress. I started my weight loss journey in January 2013 and will not give up until I have the body that I want!!  I'd like to lose about 10 more pounds and focus more on toning my body through weight lifting.

This blog will be geared more toward women who are like me. I work 40 hours a week. I commute 2 hours a day. I do not belong to a gym. I don't have a personal trainer. I don't always eat the right things. I am not particularly wealthy (or at all wealthy!). I am just a "regular" woman. I have worked very hard for my fitness and have had to get pretty creative in order to make it fit into my budget and lifestyle. I plan to share specific workouts, recipes, tips, and tricks that have helped me to be successful.

Please feel free to ask questions and make suggestions for what I can discuss here. I also am open to being a source of support and encouragement for those who are experiencing hopelessness on their journey or need a kick to get started. My hope is to motivate and encourage other women to lose weight when they feel that they can't make it work. I used to think that I couldn't make it work and I did!! I hope that you can, too!

I will close this post with sharing a few pictures that I could find of me on my journey so far. To be honest I did not purposely take any pictures of me at the very beginning of my journey because I was very pessimistic about weight loss. This was not the first time I have tried to lose weight. I didn't know if I could even lose weight. So I've only recently started taking pictures of myself for comparison purposes. That is a big thing I regret and definitely suggest that you start your journey with taking pictures in order to see your progress. Now on to the pictures!!

This was me (and my wonderful husband) about 6 months after giving birth to our beautiful daughter (who is now three years old). Can you believe I was power walking about three miles a day, 5 days a week? Yeah, I was. But THEN I would leave and eat at McDonald's for lunch (at least 2-3 times a week), or drink multiple sodas a day, or drink large sweet teas. My eating was terrible! I weighed about 205. I think my highest was 210.

This was me about a year later. At this point I had pretty much given up on exercising since I wasn't seeing any results. I think this was also when the denial set in. Now when I look back at pictures I can't BELIEVE I was this big! I think I had tricked myself into thinking I was smaller than I was, even though I couldn't fit into my old clothes and had to buy larger sizes. The brain cam be a funny thing!

The first picture was taken on Valentine's day 2013 (date night!). I had just started losing a little weight (may 5 or 10 pounds?), but was still very negative about weight loss. Second picture was taken in early July 2013, going out to celebrate my sisters birthday 20 pounds lighter! I was feeling great! Lol. This was when other people started noticing I was losing weight, which motivated me to keep going!

This picture just shows a range of how I have looked during three different stages of my weight loss. First picture was toward the beginning of my journey before I started noticing results. Second picture I think I was down 10 pounds. I think the last pic is me down 20 pounds.

Left is at the beginning of my journey (already posted), right is one of my most recent pics of me at my lowest weight, which is currently 168.

And now, the finale! I debated with myself for a long time about sharing this picture for many reasons, mainly because, well, it's embarrassing!! I remember back in August I thought I was hot stuff because I had managed to lose 20 pounds. Keep in mind I never thought I would lose one pound! So I thought I looked good!! Honestly after taking the first picture my feelings were hurt. I thought I'd looked a lot better than that! I almost became discouraged. But I didn't give up and ended up losing another 14 pounds between pic one and two (and many inches). For the first time I can say I am now happy with my body. However I have a lot more work to do! Will you join me??