The big, embarrassing BIG reveal...my before pics, weight, and measurements

#1: Health & Fitness

In preparation for this particular blog post (and my weekly updates) I bought batteries for our scale (which has been dead for ages), and borrowed a tape measure from my Mom. The scale and tape measure are going to be integral in progress tracking. I know enough about losing weight and getting fit to understand that sometimes results aren’t seen in pounds, sometimes they’re seen in inches (and vice versa). I also know that weight fluctuates not just due to food intake. It changes daily because of hormone changes, water retention, and other things. Because of that, I am going to limit weighing and measuring myself to just once a week. This is going to be difficult because I will want to hop on the scale every day. But, I know if I see a low number one day and a high one the next, it’ll just be discouraging, so for now, once a week it is.

I also feel like I need to let you in on a little back story. Some of you have known me for a while, and some haven’t. While some of the weight I want to lose is baby weight, it’s definitely not ALL baby weight. Remember how I said I’d gone to a trainer before I got pregnant? I actually lost about 10lbs during that time. Then I got pregnant and lost 18 more due to never-ending morning sickness. So, at my first visit to the OB/GYN, I weighed 162lbs. The day I delivered L, I weighed 181lbs.

The day JP and I first met, I weighed less than 130 lbs.

At our wedding, I weighed around 170. This is a 40lb weight gain in around 3 years.

Even at 170, I was 40lbs or so over where I wanted to be. I was still fat. Even at my first visit to the OB when I was pregnant, at 162 lbs, I was 32-36lbs more than where I was 4 years prior. Still fat, and I hadn't even had the baby yet!

And, this is me now.

My weight is currently 197lbs. I weigh more now than I did at 36 weeks pregnant, by 16lbs, and my daughter is 20 months old. I weigh 27 more pounds now than I did 4 weeks after having her, and there is really no reason for it other than pure laziness. I didn’t WANT to go to the gym. I never felt like I had the time, and when I did, I thought of ten million other things to do. Those days are over. I did Phase 1 of the South Beach diet with great success, (18lbs down), and I have only gained 6lbs of that back. For you non- mathematicians out there, that means at my heaviest, I weighed 209lbs. There is no logical reason for that. I still wore maternity pants until LAST AUGUST (L was 16 months old)! I’m telling you all this because I NEVER want to go back to that ever again. I don’t ever want to see 197 (and especially not higher) on the scale (even if I am pregnant again in the future). I am terribly embarrassed by this, and I think right now that is my biggest motivator. I am not happy or comfortable in my skin at all. I hate seeing photos of me, which is awful because I love taking photos of my family and I’m never in any of them because I’m embarrassed to see my fat self. I wear the same few outfits over and over again because I’m not happy with how I look in even my fat clothes now. I just carry around so much guilt surrounding allowing myself to get this way, and in order to get rid of this guilt, I have to change it.

I have never even told my husband how much I weighed at my highest point. I want to apologize to him for letting this get out of control, especially because it’s not like he met me at my highest point and is journeying with me to my lowest. He met me when I was thin (though not in shape by any means), and has watched me swell up like a white whale.

I remember sitting at a class at Cumberland, before I ever got my first tattoo. I was telling a classmate about it, because it was scheduled for that evening or within a few days. One of the guys in the class piped in, who was really against me getting a tattoo at all, and said “But what if one day you have back fat? How is that tattoo going to look?” My response: “Oh, there is NO way I will ever have back fat!!”

I have back fat. And belly fat. And thigh fat, and bat wings, and so help me it will be GONE after this year. I have said 2011 was my last year to be fat. I didn’t wake up this morning skinny, so that wasn’t entirely true, so I have decided I need to rephrase that. 2011 was my last year to be fat and do nothing about it.

Like most people, I feel like I do better when I have a plan, and compartmentalized goals. My overall goal is to lose 70lbs, and be able to run without looking like a penguin with two left feet and blind in both eyes (and to run a half marathon towards the end of the year). I also want to have muscle definition, strength, and be able to look in the mirror and not just like what I see but LOVE what I see.

I’ve started out by breaking my goals down into monthly increments. I want to lose around 10lbs a month (which would put me at goal around July). This first month, I am going to concentrate on just getting back into the routine of eating well and going to the gym. My goal is to go to the gym five days a week for around 90 minutes, and to alternate cardio and weight training. I have several different weight programs that I have found so I am going to try each and see which one is the most challenging/works the best. When I find what I like and am able to do at this point, I’ll stick with that one until it is no longer challenging. I’ll post the workout plans I have in another separate entry. Towards the end of February, I plan to start the Couch to 5k running program. It is 90 days long, with the end result being the capability to run a 5k. After completing that 90 days, I plan to take a month or two to whittle down my time, and then I plan to do the 5k to half marathon running program (also 90 days, also by the same people at cool runnings). I have a cardio trainer app on my phone and my Kindle tablet to track my calories burned, and I’d like to burn between 4000-5000 a week in the beginning. Once I start really running, I am going to re-evaluate the calorie burning goal (and likely my food intake, too).

Eating wise, I have decided (at least for now) that I’m not going to go with any particular “diet”. No weight watchers, no south beach, no atkins. I’m going to watch my food intake and count my calories. I downloaded the My Fitness Pal app on my phone and Kindle, too, at the suggestion of several people so I can track my food. I have planned my meals out for every day this week (which also helps with budgeting for groceries, and because I spent the money on the groceries for these particular items, I have to eat them). I’ll post this week’s meal plan, with calorie counts, tomorrow, and at the end of the week I’ll do a recipe round up on dishes I really enjoyed. If I start to see myself slipping, I may do a quick 2 week round of the first Phase of the South Beach diet, purely as a motivator, but I don’t think I’ll have to.

An early motivator, and my first visual goal, is to wear something from my closet that I have never even taken the tag off of.

Size 10 skinny jeans. I got them for Christmas when I was pregnant with L and have never fit into them.

Another motivator is a set of Old Navy gift cards, hanging out in my wallet. I’m refusing to use them until I hit my goal weight (or all my current clothes get so big that they don’t fit at all, whichever comes first).

I plan on requesting gift cards to Old Navy, JC Penney, and other clothing stores for my birthday and for next Christmas, and using them on a new, skinny wardrobe. What a better motivator than new, smaller, stylish clothes?

So to recap:

Weight: 197lbs

Height: 5'6"

Chest: 46"

Waist: 38"

Hips: 43 1/2"

Thigh: 23"

Calf: 16"

Upper Arm: 13 1/2"

Pants size: 14

Shirt size: XL