More than Just Pounds

After declaring myself at goal on March 1st at 158 pounds and realizing WW was never going to acknowledge that as good enough, I quit WW on March 11th.  For my height of 5'4, they said I should weigh no more than 146 pounds.  Even though I'm a size 6 and have a lot of muscle, WW made me feel fat.  It reminded me of the waif culture I grew up that caused my anorexia and bulimia where I was never thin enough.

Today, I go to the mailbox and imagine my surprise when I got this:

I don't know why they sent it but it sure made me happy and I stuck it on my keychain with my other pounds lost charms:

Before you read about how I lost my weight, go ahead and read My Body Story if you haven't had already, which will tell you how I gained my weight to begin with.

I didn't change anything about my diet in 2019 but I started hiking.  Through hiking alone, I lost my first 15 pounds.  Now, I wasn't eating enough at the time, which had evidently slowed my metabolism down enormously.  I had just assumed I couldn't lose any more weight because of menopause from my hysterectomy that I had several years before.  After I lost the first 15 pounds through hiking, it all stopped, despite continued occasional hiking and I was stuck at 185 pounds for almost 2 years.

Then, I decided to not only up the exercise by hiking more and starting weight training once a week but I also joined WW at the end of May 2022.  I honestly assumed that we had to eat all our points - dailies and weeklies - before the week was up, so I did just that.  I was so full that I literally crammed food in and thought for sure there is no way this is going to work.  Imagine my surprise when I lost 2 pounds that first week and then continued to lose and by 12 weeks I was down, not only pounds but also dramatically went from a size 18 to a 6 on bottom and a 2X to a M/L on top!  I had a cheeseburger and fries or other fast food meal once a week every week and I ate 4 meals, every 3-4 hours every day.  I believe this all helped to fire up my metabolism and increase my calorie burn and BMR (basal metabolic rate).  I was also building muscle slowly through weight training once a week and I had increased my hiking to some weeks going 4-5 times!

WW changed their plan from Personal Points to a new plan in November 2022 and it really knocked me off my game and I ended up stopping counting points and turning to counting calories and macros instead.  I also upped my weight training to 3 days a week during that same time.  I went on to put on more muscle than I've ever had in my life and losing fat simultaneously, which was visible in the progress pics I kept.  Through January and February alone of this year, I was able to reduce my back fat significantly.  I felt like I was done and needed a break and have been maintaining my weight until this past week when I made the decision to continue my journey until June.  My goal is hopefully to see a reduction in abdominal fat as I finish up my journey and then focus on maintaining.

I'm a little short on time lately but I do have a lot of plans in mind for this blog.  I was contacted recently to tell a part of my life story and when I came in to do so, they also wanted to do a photoshoot right then.  It was a little overwhelming and took me off guard but I'm so happy to inspire more people.  This particular story will reach a minimum of 40,000 people they said in my area and even more online.  It is only a small part of my story and even my last post about My Body Story is only but a small part of what I've had to face in my life.  I'm not sure how detailed I want to get in the future but my goal is always to give people hope!

I would like to post more about my diet and how I eat, keeping your metabolism running fast and efficiently and even dealing with the mental aspect of trying to love your body in this recent culture that glorifies thinness.  I grew up with that waif culture and it was one reason why I became bulimic and then anorexic at 16 years old.  I hate that it is recently making a comeback where curves are out and rail thin is in.  I believe this will only harm girls and women even more as their body image becomes their being and that is a depressing road to walk on.  It has been proven that being underweight is just as deadly as obesity.  We have to consider our body shape, genetics and how fat cell storage locations varies from woman to woman in order to keep ourselves from unachievable fads.

I also want to blog on fitness and how blood flow is probably what will keep you alive the longest and bring a healthier body and even skin.  Exercise helps you increase your blood flow and is crucial.  However, too much can create a stress environment on your insides and keep you in an inflammatory state.  There is a balance here and that is something I plan on talking more about.

I was always very slender growing up and when I became a teenager and started growing larger in places, I panicked! I ended up with anorexia and bulimia - yes, I had both together. It got so bad that I had to be hospitalized at 16. I was 98 pounds (5'4) but saw myself in the mirror as huge. Kids at school were always asking my sister was I dying because I looked so frail. In the hospital they taught me how to eat properly and I had to gain up to 125 pounds before I was released, if memory serves me correctly.

From then on, I didn't have struggles with my weight because I was very active with dancing and then went in the US Air Force. After I got out of the AF, I packed on weight fast because I was in a very bad situation at the time and also had been on steroids 3 months for shingles. I ended up around 200 pounds and a size 20. I started studying an ACE Fitness textbook and a college book on nutrition and I developed my own plan and lost 60 pounds on my own simply eating clean, calorie counting and exercising.

Then, I got pregnant with my daughter shortly after reaching a healthy weight. I ate a lot during pregnancy and gained the weight back. After I had my daughter, I did the same thing I had done before and lost weight but got stuck around 168 pounds. It was then that I signed up with WW in 2004. I went on to make goal of 146. Around that time I started training with a trainer that was also a fitness competitor. She taught me all about weight training and eating enough food. I increased my food intake, started heavy weight training and increased cardio and got even smaller down to a size 4! However, despite being smaller in size, my weight went from 142 up to 150 and I didn't make lifetime and quit WW.

I eventually stopped training because I got liver issues from a combination of things - extreme caffeine intake with supplements/coffee among other things and I put the weight back on and would lose some of it and then gain again from my many health problems. I then went through a decade of trauma. In that decade, I went through 5 surgeries, lost 3 organs, lost 4 babies (one was 5 months along), became disabled, had my son, had a hysterectomy, suffered a traumatic brain injury and permanent brain damage from a car accident and from all that (and a shoebox full of medication) - I got up to 200 pounds and a size 20.

I had to get physical therapy on my entire body - all the bed rest had given me atrophy and there was always something putting me back in bed. Slowly, I did PT on separate areas and over the years I studied and took courses on herbal medicine and worked my way off ALL my medication, every single one. Then, I got myocarditis in 2019 from a flu that almost took my life. It was then, I decided to start hiking. I was going to die trying to live! By some miracle, I didn't die! My last hospitalization was 2021. I hiked 2-3 days a week and lost 15 pounds. I was intuitively eating 80% clean food but upon examination, I was only eating 900-1300 calories a day. I was stuck at 185 for almost 2 years and still struggling with my brain damage issues. I thought I was forever stuck because of menopause probably from my 2015 hysterectomy and just now had a slow metabolism.

I got COVID in Nov. 2021 and somehow it began to heal my brain after excruciating facial pain for 3 days. I started being able to do things I was supposed to never be able to do! (They're researching how this happened, evidently I'm the only case). I got so much better that I decided to try WW on May 26th, 2022 to see if maybe I could lose the rest of the weight. I started eating more food and I was so full!  I began to drop weight almost every single week on WW and NEVER had a gain the first few months. I went from a size 18 to a 6 in just 12 weeks! I still continued losing and never gaining until the new plan came out in November and I gained 4 pounds the first week on it. I then decided to take time off WW and track my calories and macros, as I was being told my dietician that I was consuming too much protein on the new plan and it was affecting my kidneys.

The past 3 months I ate 1800-1900 calories a day (double what I ate when I was 200 pounds!) and my body shrunk even more, especially my arms, face and neck! I gained muscle because I had also increased my weight training to 3 days a week on average but my weight stayed ultimately at 158 with ups and downs.

That's my very abbreviated story!  I'm the happiest and the fittest I've ever been in my life!

Here is a video slideshow of a lot of the foods I ate on WW: