My One Year Living Healthy Anniversary

Well we have had a great celebration week here on the blog it looks like everyone is excited about the giveaways and this makes me happy :)

Today is a very important day for me and it is one I hope to continue to celebrate each and every year today marks the day that I walked into my first Weight Watchers meeting and signed up. Now when I went there it was honestly on a whim. I joined with one of best friends to see what it was all about. I had reached my breaking point 2 weeks ago. I was at my largest size ever and I was crying a few days before valentine's day when I realized the things I had bought did not fit. It was depressing going to return them and I remember feeling so hopeless. I will never ever forget that feeling, complete and utter disgust with my own body and self. I was trying to comfort myself that day and I ate chocolates and cried. I was not alone physically because I had the love of my family, boyfriend, and daughter but I was alone inside. I did not even like myself let alone love myself. I was moody, depressed, and in pain.

My daughter was 5 months old, I was 26 years old and taking 7 medications. One for depression which I had struggled with after giving birth. 2 for my heart, 1 for my stomach, 1 for my arthritis and 1 for my immune disorder. I was feeling like a 70 year old woman instead of a young hip mom and it hurt a lot. So needless to say I walked into that first Weight Watchers meeting not expecting much at all. I figured hey maybe it can help me lose a few pounds and get going. I wanted to be skinny, I wanted to look like a model. I was desperate to be thin and was determined to get it any way possible.

Little did I know that I would learn so so much and make my journey about being healthy not about a size of jeans. And by doing that, I would change my size without focusing on being skinny. The first few weeks of Weight Watchers were good I was counting and losing and going about things ok. I began to realize that my portions were out of control, that I liked to exercise, and that i was not on a diet. What for years I had been on diets. This time I told myself I would commit to a life style change. And I did not set a goal weight. That is what I liked about weight watchers. When I went in it was not about ok you need to lose 110 pounds to be healthy. nope in fact a goal was set of 5%, yes lose 5% of your body weight and celebrate. For me  5% was 12.6 pounds. That goal was reachable and I did it within 4 weeks. Then it was 10%. After that I just kept saying ok 10 more pounds. I would look ahead but only to the next 10 pounds.

People would ask me wow how much do you want to lose? whats your goal weight? I would say I do not know I just am working on losing 10 pounds right now. Some would look confused, others were say ok good luck. It took months for people to even notice I was losing weight. but you know what? I stopped caring about everyone else. I made it all about me. Not about my boyfriend, not about my friends or family, it was for me. I went to workout everyday for myself. I began to feel more energized, I began to feel physically better. I was able to come off my medications. I was able to breath and live.

Stay tuned tomorrow I will continue blabbing about my journey ;)

Now I will share the numbers!

Starting Weight: 252.6 pounds
Weight today: 161.4 pounds
Weight loss average over last 52 weeks: 1.75lbs a week.
Weight loss percentage: 36.1%

I needed that. I needed to calculate the average weekly loss to realize how far I have come. Lately I have been getting down on ,myself because honestly I wanted to be at life time weight watchers goal weight by this anniversary and weight 148 pounds. But it looks like it will take me a little longer to get there, and slowly I am working on accepting that. The statistics prove that if you lose an average of 1 to 2 pounds a week slowly then you are more likely to keep it off for life. I am determined to keep this weight off for life so I am OK with losing 1.75 a week.

So you have waited long enough how about some pictures?!?
Well here is me a year ago this very day. I saved this outfit to remind me of what I will never be again.

 

And here is me in that very same outfit today! By the way yes the pants are a size 18 and yes the shirt is a 2XL. Yes it was my going out  outfit

I was laughing inside and out trying to hold the pants up. Then there was a moment where I wanted to cry only because at that moment I realized how big I used to be and how unhealthy I was.

Then I started snapping some progression pictures and for the first time it hit me, why not take a picture of my back? I wish I had done this in the beginning to see the progression of my muscles and my weight training progress but oh well. I have one now :)

You can see where I store my weight training supplies in that pic lol I noticed that when editting them. It fits nice 10lb hand weights and a 15lb kettlebell

I am most proud of this picture right here, I looked at it and thought to myself wow is that really my back????

So thank you everyone for cheering me on this past year and helping me get through what has been the hardest, most rewarding journey of my life!