New Beginning

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” - Seneca

In 2011 I weighed 330 pounds and I was not happy. I wasn't sleeping well and I had no libido. My weight was seriously affecting my marriage & my life. So in February of 2011 I decided to do something about it. I joined a local gym and I went 5 days a week. I changed my eating habits and began keeping track of everything I ate with myfitnesspal.

From February through May, I was meticulous about going to the gym everyday and about never going over my daily calorie limit (it was somewhere around 1700 calories a day). I saw results almost right away and I lost 80+ pounds. In June, once my boys were out of school, my routine shifted and I no longer went to the gym everyday & I wasn't so strict with what I ate & while I didn't gain any weight back, I also didn't loose any.

In August, the gym that I was going to got rid of all of the group exercise classes that I had been taking and with that went my motivation and my desire to loose weight. It's easy to blame it all on the loss of the classes but the truth is, my drive to loose weight had been steadily decreasing since June.

By October of 2011, I was seriously depressed. Honestly, I don't think there was a specific trigger for my depression. It just seems like my natural cycle leads me to feel down around this time of year (a friend of mine had pointed out that she noticed that I seemed to get depressed easily in the fall).

Here it is, almost a year later and I've gained almost 50 pounds of what I had lost back. When I stop to think about all the progress that I had made, I get seriously angry with myself and the tirade of hateful words that I subject myself to could strip paint from a wall. It's difficult to not be down on myself because I know that in the end, I'm the only one to blame for my failure.

In September of 2012, another gym opened up in our community and they offer all of the old group exercise classes that I enjoy. So I joined and have been going almost everyday and I've lost a total of 9 pounds since September 1st.

Tomorrow I will start the Advocare 24 Day Challenge. I'm nervous and apprehensive about doing the challenge because it is so expensive and I would hate to fail and waste all of that money. But at the same time, I'm hoping the cost will be one of the main motivating factors for pushing me to succeed.

My main reason for using the Advocare challenge is not for the weight loss, because I know that with the proper diet & exercise, I can lose weight. I'm using the challenge because I've heard several people talk about how much mental clarity it gave them. I've heard that food cravings will go away and that I will feel so energized that exercise will seem easy.

My biggest hurdle thus far has been food and motivation. It's hard for me to be disciplined when it comes to not over eating. I don't even really love food but it's like a drug. I have to have it and there are times when I crave things with the intensity of a heroin addict (ok, maybe not that bad but you get the point). So my friends who have done the challenge have claimed that once they started doing it, they no longer had the cravings that they once did. I can only hope that the challenge has the same benefit for me.

I am starting this blog to document my progress over the next 24 days, as I do the Advocare 24 Day Challenge and beyond. It's a way for me to document how I am feeling everyday, as the challenge progresses and what obstacles I am facing and maybe it will help me to overcome them by putting them into words. It's also a way for me to hold myself accountable. I'm putting it out there for the world to see. Or at least one or two people.

I am going to be totally honest with this this, starting with my weight and measurements tomorrow, and a before picture. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a big girl and it's kind of humiliating to share that sort of information with the world. But at this point, I feel like honesty is the biggest way for me to hold myself accountable and by having a record of where I started, it will help me to see the progress that I will make.