Since I forgot to post this on my weight loss journal when it actually happened…

So, here it is. I’ve reached my goal after a 9-month journey, that started on January 15th, 2010. I am 5’6″ and back then I weighed 217lbs according to my doctor. When I asked one of the nurses at the clinic what I could do, he told me it’s age, and there was nothing I could do. I wish I could show this guy how very wrong he was back then.

Today, I weigh less than 120lbs. (Between 119 and 120 depending on when I weigh myself.) What this means is that I am on the bottom range of my BMI, and the least I can weigh without being classified as “underweight” is 118lbs. If you’re imagining someone with skin and bones, you are sorely mistaken. I have been working out religiously, and I have built muscle. I am not buff by any means, nor do I want to be, but I am at a point where I am comfortable in my own skin.

It hasn’t been easy at all. I’ve always either been on the very top of the BMI scale, overweight or obese. Yes, I tipped my BMI scale at 35. Obese begins at 30. I’ve been on diets for as long as I can remember. Even in middle school. I’ve tried not eating after 6pm, Weight Watchers, doing silly workouts that didn’t really help along with extreme diets (even the one that tells you to only eat lettuce and avocado). Nothing worked. I kept relapsing after a maximum of three months, and gained all the weight, plus more back. Then, I moved to Austin when I was hired on by Blizzard where I had my daily free sodas (all three of them), Pluckers, fast food and hot choclate. Around the same time, I started taking Depo provera. The result: 60 lbs gained within a year. Even after becoming vegetarian, I was still unable to lose the weight, because my diet was messed up. Instead of meat, I had plenty of dairy, fries, grilled cheese sandwiches and veggie burgers on white bread with lots of mayo, salty sweet potato fries and sodas.

Seeing all the thin Hollywood actresses and skinny every-day people walking down the street caused great depression. My self esteem was low… actually, I didn’t have one. One thing I am grateful for is that I wasn’t suicidal, otherwise bad things would have happened. The internal struggle was immense. I felt trapped in my own body. I wanted to escape to be someone else, I wanted to get rid of my body and replace it with something lean and pretty, like in the not-so-good movie “Surrogates”.

This had to stop. When I weighed in at 217 lbs I felt lousy, ugly, disgusting and a true failure. Looking in the mirror on a daily basis was terrible, and not being able to fit in my old clothes was even more difficult, but I kept holding on to the hope that some day I’d be able to drop all that weight. There was a beautiful and inviting gym across the street from me. I kept wanting to check it out, but the procrastinator in me prevented me until a couple days after my doctor’s visit.To further motivate myself, I spent a grand total of $500 on a Weight Loss program. I wasn’t about to waste all that money, so I had to go through with it. After 12 weeks of intense workouts, I lost 42lbs, the person with the most weight lost in the class. My trainer and my nutritionist told the class that this wasn’t temporary. If we wanted to keep the weight off, or if we wanted to keep on dropping weight, we had to change our lifestyle. No more dieting. Instead, we needed to go through an overhaul in our lives. They had us throw out all the junk from our pantry and fill out fridge with healthy foods. In addition, they advised we worked out at least 5 times a week.

After class ended, I panicked. I thought I couldn’t do it alone. Especially when I’d hit days when I wouldn’t lose weight, I felt I failed again. But just as I was about to quit, I asked myself: “who is in-charge of my life?” The answer was obvious: it was me. I was and I am in-charge of my life. It was finally time to make good use of my stubbornness. A trait that people can find difficult to deal with gave me strength to overcome negative feelings and keep moving on. Take that, cravings and sense of defeat! Yes, I may be stubborn, but you cannot control me! I am in control of my own life, so if I say I will lose all the weight, you should be damned convinced that I WILL! Trust me, I even remember the numbers when I had such moments: 187lbs, 173lbs, 158lbs, 153lbs, 148lbs, 139lbs, 137lbs, 133lbs, 127lbs, 123lbs… But stepping on the scale days later and seeing that I had dropped more weight made me even more motivated. I wanted to keep on going! It gave me strength.

I would like to thank everyone for being there for me. I don’t even know if I could have done this without all the supportive people in my life.

This is truly an amazing moment. I haven’t weighed this little since before high school. Is it over, yet, though? No, it’s not. Like I said, it is a change of lifestyle. Though my weight loss journey ends here, my leading a healthy lifestyle continues, and my quest to maintain a healthy body starts today. 

Thank you for being part of some of the happiest and most gratifying moments in my life. Now, time to train for some competitions. Anyone want to race me?

Due to moving to another state, I have been slacking with posting here. Just a quick update, I’ve lost 74.5 lbs, and still going. I exercise a lot more, because Colorado seems to be a state that encourages many outdoor activities, and the weather is perfect for this.

On the downside, I have been experiencing nausea and eye pain upon standing up, and it seems this is a result of low blood pressure and/or malnutrition. Since my BP is fine, I blame the latter, though I am not sure what I can change, because I still eat 4-5 times a day, and I even tried increasing my protein intake. I don’t drink enough water, so hopefully increasing my water intake helps.

25.5lbs to go! Can’t wait!

Original post: June 8, 2010 at 11:24 pm on blog: http://vialofdreams.wordpress.com

I just stepped on the scale, and discovered I weigh less than I weighed in high school. This is so amazing, and I feel fantastic! Best of all, I am not hungry. it does get frustrating from time to time when I crave chocolate. It is okay to have a piece of dark chocolate once in a while, but I know that if I had a block of dark chocolate here I couldn’t stop… food addiction sucks. Fortunately, we have plenty of fruit, so I can have some fruit with higher sugar content which usually does the trick.

On my way to the gym now, after 2 days. Will definitely go for half an hour cardio (10 minutes stairs, 10 minutes arc trainer and 10 minutes elliptical), then half an hour workout on the treadmill which includes some cardio and strength training. Will see whether or not I’ll do an additional half an hour of pure strength straining, depending on how my belly button feels.

Total weight shed: 67.8lbs (30.8kg).

Original post: June 8, 2010 at 2:53 am on blog: http://vialofdreams.wordpress.com

I haven’t gone to the gym the last 2 days, because I got  belly button piercings, and they still hurt. This hasn’t stopped me from continuing my eating well, even though we went out yesterday to a Tex-Mex restaurant called Chuy’s. The food was great, I had a large dinner salad with honey mustard dressing on the side, and I also had a couple bites from my boyfriend’s veggie enchilada. Still, I have dropped yet another 2 lbs since my last post, bringing me to qa grand total of 66 lbs since January.

Hopefully, I am able to go work out tomorrow. It will most likely be just for an hour, with half an hour cardio and half an hour strength. Unless I get to go run a 5k with my friend. Colorado Springs will host For the Cure in September, and I would like to attend. Still deciding whether to run the 5k or the 10k, so we’ll see how training goes.

Weight Loss With BlizzCon Peeps – Day 1

Original post: June 4, 2010 at 9:57 pm on blog: http://vialofdreams.wordpress.com

I stumbled across a Forum post on the World of Warcraft Blizzcon board thanks to my friend Adam. There, I found a group of wonderful people with one goal in mind: lose weight before BlizzCon. The blog http://fattienomorebyblizzcon.wordpress.com belongs to the wonderful person who started it, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that every single person embarking on this journey succeeds. Though I am not going to BlizzCon this year, I have decided to join them. I need to drop another 30 lbs or so, and having extra motivation is always a good thing.

Today’s workout consists of two visits to the gym: swimming, and later an actual workout. For swimming, I only managed to get a little workout done before Mike dragged me to the slides. The workout consisted of the following:
– 8 laps freestyle
– 8 laps kick-board
– 2 laps fist drill – swimming with palms made fists while focusing on pushing downward, rotation and ensuring that the arms are not crossing above the head
– 1 lap finger drag – similar to normal swim, but ensuring that the fingers touch the side of the body and the elbow raises up when the arm is lifted from the water, then push forward into the water, arms straight, NOT crossing above head
– 1 lap 6 beat exercise – 6 kicks  for every stroke

This evening, I plan to go to the gym again for a regular workout. I will likely do one of my trainer’s workouts on the treadmill, combined with some strength and conditioning. The workout will be at least 1.5 hours long with one hour workout on the treadmill, heart rate medium-high for fast fat burning. The last half an hour will consist of bicep, tricep, abdomen and thigh conditioning. This includes bicep curls, shoulder presses, chest presses, 100 push-ups, 155 crunches, step training.

As for the food, I eat 4-5 times a day, I try to eat every 3-4 hours. Today I had a banana for breakfast/snack (woke up kind of late), tofu and veggies for lunch, will have a small salad for dinner and 1/4 protein bar after workout. This brings me to:
3 servings of protein – 21 grams (1 serving = 7g or 1 oz)
2 servings of fruit
3 servings of fat – 15 grams total (1 serving of fat = 1g)
4 servings of veggies
– no starches
– no milk

As you can see, I don’t count calories, as I have a custom-made meal plan, where I don’t have to count calories, but I count total fat, fruit, veggies, carbs/starches and dairy intake.

The Journey So Far

Original post: June 3, 2010 at 10:29 pm on blog: http://vialofdreams.wordpress.com

I am finally no longer overweight according to the BMI scale. Though the journey doesn’t end here, and a number on a scale is just that: a number, it feels immensely good to have accomplished such a daunting task.

Weight issues have been haunting me since I was little. All through middle school, when kids I was friends with would make funny remarks about my weight, high school, where class-mates would advise I should lose weight, as well as college and my adult life until I decided to make a change, my appearance and my weight have caused hurtful wounds in my self-esteem. It wasn’t easy, I tried many “solutions” like dieting, not eating after 6pm, Weight Watchers, inefficient workouts, but none of them gave a permanent resolution to my ongoing struggle, and each time I ended up re-gaining all the weight I had lost and then some. Working at the company I just left made things worse. For a sweet-toothed person like myself, that place was a trap. Free sodas? Bring them on! I took full advantage of the three sodas a day rule. Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, Root Beer, Fanta, apple and apple-cranberry juice, Cherry Coke, Vanilla Coke, you know … all the stuff with high fructose corn syrup I was so oblivious to. Not to mention, when I started working there I was still on omnivore, so meat was regularly on the menu. Not just any meat, but Puckers, Oriental express, barbecue ribs, steaks and burgers. In addition, I was ignorant to unhealthy additives, such as hydrogenated oils, partially hydrogenated oils, aspartame, corn syrup and such. Calculating portion sizes was also not on top of my list. Not to mention, the birth control I was using at the time was known to cause massive weight gain in women, a warning I ignored for two whole years.

One day, I woke up and weight a daunting 217 lbs, more than I had ever weighed in my life. For a 5’6” tall this number categorized me as obese. When I asked a nurse at my clinic what I could do, he just blamed it on my aging and told me to get used to it. My doctor however advised I got off the birth control shot and started an exercise routine. I was desperate to overcome this issue. I got tired of being denied privileges because I was overweight. After moving to the United States, I gained a grand total of 68 lbs, and felt awkward walking down the street. I didn’t want to send my mom pictures in shame of what I had become. The media only fed these feelings; seeing all the beautiful, skinny women made me depressed, and though I tried not to show it, I was hurting… very much.
On January 14th I signed up at Life Time Fitness. I figured it was a nice place, had a pool and other amazing amenities, plus it was across the street from our apartment complex. Once there, I took a Team Weight Loss course of 12 weeks, with nutrition coaching every week and a workout three times a week. I started eating better foods, counted everything I ate; I learned how to live a healthy lifestyle, worked out 6 times a week and started losing weight fast. My class was amazed by the speed of my weight loss; their words and attitude gave me motivation. I wasn’t about to disappoint them at the following weigh-in! And so it continued. Each week, I lost an average of 2 to 5 lbs and felt incredible. My amazing boyfriend and wonderful friends have been very supportive, and having a strong support-system makes all the difference. You have no idea just how grateful I am for each and every one of you, and I am so proud when I hear *you* are making a change in your life.

This is not a diet. This is not temporary. Deciding to live a healthier life is not a “seasonal job”. You have to do this full-time to see and maintain the results. I am now 64 lbs lighter than I was in January. During my last doctor’s visit last week, the nurse (different nurse from the one I spoke with back in the day) looked at my chart and asked me how I did it, then she gave me a hug and congratulated me. The doctor asked if I had taken diet pills or supplements, and I was proud to say I have not. I am leading a healthy lifestyle, and that is all that is takes.

Do I get discouraged? Oh yes. Sometimes, I feel I cannot do this anymore, I want to quit and I just want to curl up in a ball and cry. The key is not to stop when this happens. You have to think “I am in control! Not hunger, not food, not the negative feelings. I *can* do this. I have so far, so I can keep it up!” Then, set attainable goals, and it is such an amazing feeling to achieve them, and it is even more rewarding when you go beyond you expectations.