Health and Fitness

For a while now I have been wanting to publicly share my fitness journey but felt uncomfortable with putting it on Facebook. Now that I have a blog, I think it is the perfect time and place to share! I am so passionate about healthy eating and exercising and I tell people every chance I get everything I have learned on this journey. I have tried to make this as brief as possible but there is so much that I feel is important about my journey...

Check out those scrawny legs!

As a young girl I was always very skinny and taller than everyone else in my class. I was such a picky eater when I was little and my brother and I were always active. Sometime in my middle school days I stopped growing. Seriously, if I wanted to I could wear a girl's XL, I'm often tempted to buy girl's clothing because they have THE cutest stuff and it is so much cheaper than adult clothing! Anyway... I stopped growing but my appetite didn't! I ate all. of. the. time. I would eat breakfast- cereal, or grits with toast at home. Go to school eat either a sandwich or Chef Boyardee, chips, and Oreo's, or either Swiss rolls for lunch. Then, I would come home in the afternoon and either have chocolate chip cookies and milk, a bowl of cheese, some more Swiss rolls- sometimes I would have two at lunch and then come home and eat two more- or my favorite snack which was two pieces of white bread smothered in ranch dressing. Ugh, that makes me want to puke just thinking about it! Sometimes I would eat lunch at school and then go by sonic and get a sandwich after school then go home and eat supper! Wow, I didn't realize how bad it was until I started writing it out.


Sometime during my senior year of high school I decided to go on a "diet" which wasn't a really diet. I suppose I maybe lost 5 pounds. When I started college I was so determined that I was going to lose the "Freshmen 15" instead of gain it. Pssh, that did NOT work. I definitely gained the "Freshmen 15" or somewhere close to it. I did work out at the gym on campus some but the food I was eating was awful for me. Many people tell me, you were never fat to begin with, no I wasn't fat but I was overweight for my size. I'm 5'2 and at my heaviest I was somewhere between 145-150 and on the road to being way heavier than that. I don't know for sure exactly how much I weighed because getting on the scale wasn't my favorite thing to do, I could have been heavier than that. I was definitely unhappy with the way I looked which led me to eat even more and eat really bad things at that.

Summer 2011

Summer 2011- I will never be as tan as Aaron is... I'm so jealous!

In the fall semester of my sophomore year of college, a couple of my roommates came to me and said "We have a fitness challenge that we are going to do and we want you to do it too". So I said okay why not. At this time I was beginning to do some research about eating healthy and was scheduled to run a 5k with them. So, the "challenge" was to go one month with no sugar and no bread, we could have bread one time a week. I took this thing seriously, I ate one sandwich the ENTIRE month I also swore off of pasta, french fries and anything chocolate! This was incredibly challenging for me and taught me really important lessons about self control. This was my turning point.

Fall 2012- The day of my first 5k and beginning of "the challenge"

After the challenge was over I continued to stay away from chocolate, candy, white bread, pasta, and french fries. In addition I also began to run 3 miles a day. In the beginning I walked/ran but, I built up my endurance and actually started running the whole 3 miles! I became obsessed with the ToneItUp girls, who are my favorite sources of inspiration. They taught me so much about healthy eating and exercising. During that summer I was in the best shape of my life. I would wake up and do one of the ToneItUp workouts, eat an omelet packed with veggies for breakfast, have a small snack around 10:30, eat lean protein like, tuna or chicken breast and some veggies and quinoa or sweet potatoes for lunch. Then, in the evening my mom and I would go for a run and we would have something like grilled chicken and salads for supper.

left- end of sophomore year college '13     right-end of freshmen year college '12

Summer 2013 (these are the same pink shorts in the picture above!)

Summer 2013

During my junior year I stayed about the same with the same diet and similar workout regimen. I began to be a little more lenient about my diet and add in some foods I restricted myself from. At the beginning of my senior year, this past fall, I started to gain some weight and noticed I was losing muscle definition. So, I started to get back on top of my eating and exercising. This was SO hard because I had really gotten lazy over the summer and gotten out of my habit of getting up and exercising first thing in the morning. I began to really focus on what I was eating and worked out when I had time. I rarely had time to run anymore because of my schedule change and that I lived at home and had a 30 minute commute to and from school, by the time I got home from school it was dark or we had things to do at home that kept me from going to run. So I did my morning workouts when I could and did workout videos online.

3 summers ago (left)- this past summer (right)

Fall 2014

This past January I started going to Zumba and fell in love with it. Running is really hard on our joints and I had some trouble in the past that makes me anxious about getting back into. Zumba is amazing because I have a group  that holds me accountable and I get to break a sweat and exercise while having fun and dancing. Now, I am not the best dancer by any means, I know that I look like an idiot trying to shake my butt, I do it anyway because I want to better myself.

I'm now at my lowest weight and am so happy! I eat because I'm hungry now, not because I want food. This is something I have struggled with and I may always struggle with. Sometimes I give in and eat some chips and chocolate just because I want something to snack on while I'm watching Pretty Little Liars. It's not something that I do ALL of the time, which is the key. I used to eat like this all of the time, every single day, sometimes all day long. I would eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I didn't understand how food affects our bodies but now I do.

 

 

 

February 2015

My latest accomplishment is purchasing a size four pair of blue jeans from American Eagle!!

I know this seems ridiculous but, before I started losing weight I was in a size 10 and very quickly were those size 10's becoming too small...

My too tight size 10 pants

I used to HATE buying clothes, I came to college with a very small wardrobe. People used to make comments about the little bit of clothes I had, it always made me feel so bad but the reason was because I hated buying clothes. I literally had one pair of capri pants that I wore during the summer of my senior year and my freshmen year at college.The pink shorts - that I absolutely loved but can't wear anymore because they are too big- I broke down and bought at the end of my Freshmen year of college because I had to retire the capri's.

I absolutely love buying clothes now and I have so much fun putting together outfits!!

I know that it is not the most drastic transformation but I am so proud of the changes I've made. I was so unhappy with the way I looked and it was partly because I was so unhealthy. I have learned so much about food, exercise, myself, and life in general on my fitness journey. I still have some small goals that I'm working towards, they may take me a while but I know that I will reach them and the hard work will be so worth it in the end.