Me...a year ago

This was me one year ago.


This photo was taken at my Nanny's house at Thanksgiving last year.

My weight was 185 pounds. I wore a size 18 in jeans and an extra large shirt.

I came home from that trip and seeing those pictures was shocking.

I called my Nanny and told her that I was going to lose some weight. She told me that was good because she was worried that I'd become diabetic. My Nanny was diagnosed with mild diabetes late in her life. From the moment she heard this, she never ate anything with sugar again. Never. She had amazing will power.

This was my last visit and last photo with Nanny. We exchanged letters and a phone calls. By the time she passed away in February, I had lost over twenty pounds and she was proud of me.

In the beginning, I exercised with my Wii gaming system. I did the Biggest Loser, EA Sports and Jillian Michaels workouts. I woke up at 5am, crawled down to the basement and did my workout as silently as possible as to not wake up Kylie. On some days, I would work out again at night. But I made it a point to get five workouts in per week.

I recorded everything I ate in the LoseIt app on my iPhone. I was determined to eat "normal" foods. I added more fruit, vegetables and grains to our weekly menus. I went through all of our favorite dinner recipes and calculated the calories and nutrition of each. That way, I knew the calories in our favorite chicken enchilada casserole dish or my usual pot of chili. I could calculate the appropriate portion based on the calories and plan for those calories in what I ate for breakfast and lunch.

Later, I added in some running. Even running in the rain and snow in that horrible winter in DC. And then I joined Gold's Gym and started running on their treadmill in the evenings and on the weekends.

My goal was to lose 45 pounds by Kylie's birthday (between November and April). And I achieved that goal be weighing in at 140 on April 17th.

In May, when we moved to Florida, I immediately found a gym and kept up with my running on treadmills. But in July, I started to feel stagnant. I had maintained my weight at 140 for four months but I felt like I could so very easily slip back into old eating patterns and gain back the weight. So I decided to take on the challenge of running 13.1 miles.

The intensity of these training runs was exactly what I needed. I never ever thought I would run a race much less one with 13 miles. But training for my first half-marathon has been a blast. And I dropped eight more pounds.

I now weigh 132 pounds. I wear a size 8 in jeans and a medium in tshirts.



I'm already looking ahead to what is next for me. I started lap swimming in the pool this week. And after the race, I plan to do add upper body weight lifting when I'm at the gym and join a fun cardio class as well as keep up with my runs.

Thanks to you my dear readers for all of your support. My big half marathon race is on Sunday! I'll let you know how I did!