My Journey so Far
Before
After
I wanted to post about my journey so that you can get to know me a bit better. I don’t even know where to begin. If this post gets long, please bear with me.
My struggle with my weight started at 17. You might think that, like most teenagers, I ate what I wanted when I wanted and eff the calories, but that wasn’t the case. I grew up on a farm so we always had fresh fruit and veggies. My problems began because I had cysts on my ovaries and the gyno thought it would be best to put me on the depo shot. At the time I was 120 lbs and a size 3. Typically when someone goes on the that shot they get 150 mg every 3 months, but he put me on 550 mg a month. I was supposed to take 6 shots. I stopped at 4 because I gained 38 lbs in 4 months. I went from a size 3 to a size 12. I hated my body at that time and withdrew into my fiction books.
When I met the man who I would eventually marry, I lost from 158 to 134 and felt better about myself even though I had already developed the mindset that I still was fat and looked horrible. We got married and I maintained my weight fine, but didn’t lose any more. Three months after marriage I became pregnant. I had been told my 3 docs I couldn’t have kids so I was surprised and felt very blessed. I gained 21 lbs with that pregnancy, he was 5 weeks early. I struggled after having him to lose weight. It just wouldn’t come off despite I was only 20. A year and a haIf later I found out my birth control failed and I was pregnant again.
I thought one baby was a fluke lol. I think God was laughing at me at that point and just having fun. My 2nd pregnancy was twins, however, I miscarried one of the babies when I got knocked down by a dog. I ended up gaining 31 lbs with Ariana. At this point I weighed 181. However, the weight fell off after having her. I got back down to 134 easy within 4 months just from breast feeding and watching what I ate. Chasing after 2 kids that young was fitness enough lol. I had no intention of having any more kids. My hubby at the time promised to get a vasectomy so I wouldn’t have to go through a tubal.
He never went through with that promise and again my birth control pill failed (different pill btw). I gained a good 40 lbs with Alinna. Unfortunately what worked after having Ariana didn’t work with Alinna and I was back to struggling to get the weight off. Then when she was a year old my husband and I divorced. The weight came off mostly at that point because I couldn’t bring myself to really eat. Everything made me sick. I didn’t have a job and I now had 3 kids to support. I eventually did get a job and mostly maintained my weight at 145 lbs. No, I wasn’t happy with that weight, but it just wouldn’t budge anymore. So I resigned myself to that.
My stupid late twenty something self decided to have a one night stand with my ex-husband and *shocker* my birth control failed again. Along came Cheyenne. She is special needs and the last almost 15 years my life has pretty much been dedicated to helping her. She is fairly self sufficient now, but that definitely wasn’t always the case. I now had 4 kids to take care of. I had to quit my job when I was pregnant because they didn’t accept me having to go on bed rest so long as I was a store manager and I was going into work every day throwing up between the stress of the job and my dad being in the hospital and now this.
I don’t remember how much weight I gained with Cheyenne but I know it didn’t come off and it kept going up until I hit around 215. In 2017, I believe, a doctor put me on a low carb diet and boy did the weight fall off faster than ever before. I lost over 70 lbs in 3 months and managed to keep it off for almost a year, but I got bored with it and my regular doctor was worried about my cholesterol going up so I came off and guess what… If you said the weight came back, you’d be right and then some. I finally topped out this year at 232 lbs. Biggest I’ve ever been and if I weren’t already on antidepressants I’d be super depressed.
I still hate the way I look. I managed to lose down to 215 again on my own by doing intermittent fasting, and I am still doing that, but my weight fluctuates between 215 and 218. When I started my Beachbody journey about three weeks ago, I weighed in at 218. I bravely posted the scale on my Instagram to keep me accountable. I have been doing 21 day fix and started my shakeology when it came in. I had to take a rest day that first week because I was so damn sore I could barely move. However, despite the unplanned rest day, I was down 4 lbs that first week bringing me to 214.
Today I am at 212, the smallest I have been in years and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Sorry for the book length post lol. I sort of got lost in telling the story.