I am a 35 year old woman living in Montreal, Canada and I am starting this blog because a) a friend of mine told me about it and I thought it would be fun and b) I thought it would be a great way for me to track my weight loss progress i started 6 months ago and share some of my stories as well as tips and tricks i picked up along my journey. I am also hoping that i might someday inspire people to do the same. Losing weight is not an easy thing to do, but with a lot of determination and discipline, anyone can do it…If i can do it, you can too! This is my life as it is at the moment…enjoy!
I have struggled with my weight since I hit puberty i would say. I started gaining a lot of weight when i was about 11 or 12 years old, and got quite chubby by the time I was 14. Then my Mom basically said that I had to do something about it. At the time I totally resented her for saying that, but now i realise that she was right in doing this and she did it for my own good. So I went to see a weight specialist doctor and he assessed me and my weight and put me on a very strict 1200 calorie per day diet and told me i had to combine exercise in there too. Now me hating the gym, this was the hardest part for me. But my Mom came with me and joined a gym with me to encourage me and help me along. This worked wonders! At the end of the summer (3 months) I had lost 45 lbs. As reluctant as I was to do this at first, I was so happy that I did because when school started again, I went into grade 9 being much thinner and happier.
Throughout high school I pretty much maintained my weight, and was pretty happy with the way I looked. Then I went off to College, moved out on my own for the first time and stopped watching what i eat completely. It was a whole different ball game when someone else isn’t making all your meals and portioning everything out. Plus i just got sick of eating so little that i just gave up on the diet and ate what i wanted. Then my early 20’s came along, and I started not only eating more and snacking more, but I started partying more too. I used to go out 4 or 5 nights a week and drank a lot more, sometime enough to make me sick. That is when the weight started coming back on. At first I didn’t even really notice the weight gain, because i wouldn’t really shop for clothes, I would wear old, baggy men’s clothing, so i never knew what size i was wearing. Then I moved across the country and started noticing that i was getting bigger, but I was in total denial about it, refusing to weigh myself. After going through many hardships where I was living, I started feeling depressed all the time and just completely gave up on myself and stopped caring. This lasted for many years, I was never really happy, and I honestly thought that I was just one of those miserable people that could never really be happy.
I worked on myself for years after that, but I still didn’t work on my weight or my health, I worked on my inner me and my self confidence. Then about 1 year and a half ago I got my wake-up call! I went to see my doctor for a routine check-up and she did the usual, weighed me and took my blood pressure and that is when I got the shock of my life! She told me that I weighed 236 pounds and that my blood pressure was 140 over 90 which is very high for a 30 something year old woman. She showed me a weight chart and told me that I fell into the OBESE category and that my high blood pressure was due to my excess weight. I was in tears!! I couldn’t believe that not only did i let myself go so much, but that now I am having health problems because of it. It still took another few months before I finally did something about it.
