Getting to know me a bit better.

I'm not really sure what to write about today. I have so many things I want to learn about and share, but I just can't seem to get myself organized today. Have you ever had one of those days? Perhaps it was the unexpected snow on my car this morning, or the full moon that just passed, or...who knows? Whatever it is, I'm just feeling the need to journal instead of research and share.

This seems like a good time to share a bit about my past, present and where I want my future to go, health wise. Give my readers, those of you who aren't my mother, a chance to get to know me personally a bit more.

At age 16

As a teenager, I was relatively active. Active in that I pretty much walked everywhere I went. Well, until I got a car and license. I wasn't fat, but I felt like I was huge. Typical teenager, I suppose. As a young adult, I didn't pay much attention to my weight, until after I had my first child. I was horrified when my weight went above 200 pounds, but not motivated enough to do anything about it. Thinking back, if I had done something about it then, I might be in a different place now.

My weight went up and down from 160-200 over the next few years. I never really spent any time exercising or worrying about what I ate. At least not with any consistency. In 2003 I had another baby. My weight went back up over 200 pounds and pretty much stayed there. In 2006 I had my third child. After his birth, my weight was about 235 pounds. This was the heaviest I have ever been.

May 2011                                       February 2007

In 2006, I not only had my third child, but I was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through chemo and radiation. The doctors told me I would probably end up losing weight because of the chemo treatments. If I hadn't been so determined to not be sick from the chemo, which I really wasn't, this probably would have been true. After my treatments I was still in the high 220's. I was healthy in that I didn't have cancer, but I wasn't healthy with the rest of my life. I was eating unhealthy food and not getting any exercise.

At this point I wasn't happy with how thing were going with my health overall. After a long discussion about this with some close friends, I incorporated some exercise into my life. I started with Beachbody's Power 90. After some time, I added in Beachbody's Brazil Butt Lift. I worked out 6 days a week with the Beachbody programs and with kickboxing and water aerobics at the gym and got down to 179. Needless to say, I was very happy with the progress I was seeing. I was feeling better and looking better.
 

As things tend to happen in life, I fell off the healthy wagon. I can't pinpoint an exact reason, but I stopped working out with any regularity and stopped focusing on what I was eating. That was in mid 2010.

Since then, I have been working out on and off and eating healthy on and off. I am learning to get back to my healthy lifestyle. This blog is part of that. Learning and sharing, and having my readers keep me accountable. This is it. It's do time. I'm back to eating healthy and making smart choices with my life. The next step is rejoining a class at the gym and resuming my workouts with my Beachbody programs and maintaining regularity.

Welcome to my journey to Healthy Living.