I have been a blog reader for about a year now. I hadn't really planned on ever starting a blog, but I have BIG weight loss goals in mind and I thought this would be a great place to get everything that is in my head down. I'm not really doing this so that I have a bunch of followers, but more as an online journal that I can post my plans, failures and successes, pictures and any ideas that I find to help me along the way.
I'll start this post by telling my "story". I currently weigh 198.4 lbs. This the highest I have ever been and WAY to close to my dreaded 200 lbs mark for me to sleep comfortably. I'll have to go back a few years to really explain my journey.
In 2000 I began college at a very athletic 130 lbs. At 6 ft tall, this is a skinny weight on my frame. I started that fall as a track and field athlete. Having done sports year round my whole life, the daily practices did not cause me to lose any more weight. In fact, because I was doing much more lifting than I had in the past, I put on 5- 10 lbs per year for the first 4 years I was in track, but I wasn't worried about the gain. Throughout my time as a Heptathlete I had various injuries, the worst of which was stress fractures in my left (power) foot. I sat out a season, but my foot never felt the same again. By my last year I was practicing much less to try to prevent any further injury to my body and I gained another 10 lbs. I was put on a strict diet by my coach, but it didn't really change anything (probably in part because I had a really hard time following the diet and I didn't change my drinking habits). Up until this point I had been pretty happy with my weight.
After my I received my undergrad degree, I moved to a different city to begin law school. From the moment I began classes, I HATED everything about law school. I went from being part of a team and having lots of close friends to knowing no one and being in constant competition for grades. As a competitive person I thought I would like this part of law school, but instead I just felt like a failure when I didn't understand a concept and didn't have anyone to turn to to help. By the end of my first semester I did make one very good friend. If it wasn't for this friend I might have quit school all together. We began training for a local half marathon. We participated in the half a week before our first year of school ended. Training with my friend was fun, but long distance running is not my thing. And because of the amount of miles we put in, I was eating way to much to lose any weight.
During this time I also moved in with my boyfriend/fiance and we began to plan our wedding. I felt stressed about everything in my life and spent most of my time sitting on my couch in a depression (often with food in hand). By the time our wedding rolled around I hadn't managed to lose any weight and I felt pretty horrible. I laugh now, because 172 lbs is sounding pretty fabulous! I was not horribly out of shape, but needed overall toning and to drop a 10-15 pounds.
Over the last 3 years I have put on more than 20 more lbs. I started a 2 year paid internship at the university athletic department in my town as a compliance officer. It was a huge relief to be done with school and I wanted to try to get my life back together. About a year ago I started taking medicine for my depression. I was hopeful that I would be one of the people that would lose weight (a possibility according to the side effects!), but if anything I felt that I was having more trouble losing any weight or even maintaining my current weight. Somehow all of this just caused me to want to dive right into more food!
In October, after years of pain in my left foot and going long stretches with out working out, I went to my doctor demanding answers. I was told to rest my foot for a few months and come back. So I held off any exercise through out the dreaded holiday (eating) season and a move into a new house- during which I gained another 10 lbs. In January I went back ready to get my answers. After a clear x-ray I was sent to an orthopedic surgeon. I had an MRI done on my foot and it was determined that I had a Morton's Neuroma and an Occult Ganglion. At this point I scheduled surgery and was told it was my choice if I wanted to exercise, but I could do more permanent damage to my foot, so I decided to hold off until the surgery was finished.
My surgeon continually guaranteed that my recovery would only be about 2 weeks after the surgery and that I would be back to running within a month. After scouring the Internet for stories from other people who have had the surgery (for the Neuroma- the Ganglion combination is unusual and I didn't find anything similar), I didn't believe him, but felt I didn't have much choice in the matter. The surgery was successful and my nerve and the ganglion were both removed. After the surgery I was informed that the surgery was much more extensive than was originally expected because of the size (5 cm x 1 cm) of the ganglion and its location. I took several days off of work, then was on crutches for few more weeks before I was even walking on my own in a surgical boot. I began psychical therapy and saw some improvement to my foot and withing 2 1/2 months of surgery was finally cleared to do minimal exercise. A work friend and I started hitting the gym at our work facilities, but I had to start slooooow. I was only allowed to use an elliptical, so I would do about 5 mins on the lowest level before having to stop.
It's now July, and I am allowed to do any exercise I want as long as I'm careful not to injure my foot. I have continued to use the elliptical 2 times a week for 20-30 mins. This clearly NOT enough, as I am at my heaviest weight ever and no easy way out in sight.
Well, this post is ridiculously long, so I'm going to call it quits. I ahouls have some posts soon about some plans I am putting in place to lose the weight and get into better shape and hopefully some before pics and stats. Woo hoo!
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