Growing up I was always told I was built like my Grandma and she was a heavy woman. This is something was the first detrimental thing that affected me more than I realized. That to me meant as a woman I was going to be heavy. I have two beautiful daughters, Kayla who is 11 and Lindsey who is 7. I had a very hard time getting rid of the baby weight I had put on after each of my pregnancies. I figured it would just come off. I kept thinking to myself I will start working out and lose it easily but that never happened. I lost my Dad to Lung Cancer 5 years ago and that is also something that was a huge factor in me gaining weight. I am the older sister and I felt so much pressure to be the strong one and be there for my younger sister and my mom. At the time I didn't really deal with what had actually happened. I dealt with this by emotional eating. My blood pressure had also gotten very high during this time as well. I went to the doctor and he told me that I needed to lose 50 pounds to begin to get control of my blood pressure. It was 180/200! I was 30 years old and was in shock that my blood pressure had gotten so high, How could that be? I really did not think I had gained that much weight and thought I honestly needed to lose 20 pounds and I would be at a healthy weight. But that scared me. I had decided to try and lose weight for my health and for my family. I tried for 2 weeks with no success and gave up. I really wasn't that serious and felt like I was going to fail so why try. It was too hard and 50 pounds seemed like so much. That was too overwhelming! My fear of not being able to succeed was stronger than my fear of my health. I was put on medication for my blood pressure and monitored for a year. Finally they got control of my blood pressure but my doctor kept encouraging me to lose weight. He gave me brochures on weight management classes and nutrition classes. My response was but I eat healthy, I eat fruits and vegetables but I was also a member of the clean your plate club. This was another challenge I had to overcome. By this time I weighed 235 pounds! I hate typing that but it is the truth and that was my starting point.
My husband and his success as well as my daughters were a huge inspiration in my pathway to a healthier life.
My goal is to ispire others to have the same success I had by sharing the steps I took to get to where I am now which is 95 lbs lighter.
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