I Did It!! Finally!

I finally reached my goal of a size 8!  Nearly three years ago, I started at a size 16.  The picture on the left is about three months after I had my second child, BLL.  This was right about the time my weight started spiraling out of control.  I weighed less after my daughter was born than in that photo.  I nearly gained 20lbs afterwards because so many things went off track at that particular moment in time.

It all started when my daughter had to stay nearly a month in the NICU at Wesley.  They had these pudding parfaits in the cafeteria that I absolutely became addicted to.  If you haven't tried one of those, don't!  I truly believe food can become an addiction, especially when you are going through some rough patches.  Food is so easy to turn to and until you acknowledge it and decide to become proactive about it, it can be a very difficult addiction to break.  After all, anything in life worth having takes a lot of work and doesn't come easy.  Losing weight didn't come easy either.  Food is everywhere, all the time!  You can't hide from it.  So when I stepped on that scale and it read(I can't believe I'm going to share this, I've tried so hard to never admit it.)187lbs., I nearly dropped to the floor.  Granted to some this number may be nothing, but everything in life is relative to where we've come from.  I came from many of years never having to worry about my weight and eating as I pleased, until I turned 20.  Everything caught up to me!  Gradually I started gaining 10lbs here and 10lbs there and didn't think twice about it.  I figured it was natural to gain weight as I developed into Adulthood and to some degree, I'm sure it was.  Finally, before I had kids, I was around 140 and a size 8.  Thus after the extreme weight gain after having kids, size 8 became my goal.  Would I like to be a size 6, yes I would, but size 8 is perfectly acceptable to me.

Losing 30lbs has taken me 3 years of hard work!  Most people could lose this amount of weight in a years time or less, but I have one thing that is constantly working against me..........a Metabolic Disorder, known as PCOS aka Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  Simply put, for every one pound a normal healthy person would gain, I would gain 5lbs.  To lose weight, I actually have to fight my own body.  This is no easy task.  It means planning my snacks for every 2 hours of the day.  A typical day for me consists of this;

Breakfast: Greek Yogurt and Fruit(usually banana or strawberries), Green Tea and/or Coffee

Snack: Fruit(such as an apple or orange)and Snack Cheese, Water 16oz and/or Coffee

Lunch: Generally consists of the leftovers from dinner the night before such as a slice or two of homemade pizza or a bean salad, such as pinto bean salad with toasted pita.

Snack: (This is when the day gets tough)We've done celery with peanut butter and raisins, Fruit Smoothie with tofu, whole wheat toast with apple butter(make sure it doesn't contain HFCS, which you can find in the natural foods section, we get ours from my Mom, she makes her own),Water 16oz.

Dinner:  Is almost always a vegetarian dish.  We've made a stir-fry veggie pizza, ravioli with spinach topped with 1tsp. olive oil and parmesan cheese, sweet potato chili, just to list a few.  Water 16oz

Last Snack: Green Tea, I have my little cheat treat for example one scoop of ice cream(make sure it doesn't contain trans fats or HFCS).  Hope to replace with fruit when I manage diet a bit better, heheh.

The biggest rule I follow and the most important is never to eat after 9pm.  I also am a stickler on low or no sodium aka salt.  When you have PCOS, it is very important to reduce the amount of salt intake to help maintain a healthy blood pressure, not to mention, it does help with weight loss.  That is true for everyone, not just us PCOS cysters.  :)  I also hope to start adding in some steel cut oats with my breakfast, all in due time.  When it comes to weight loss, it's all about baby steps.  With everything said, I will add the disclaimer, I am not an expert and I do not consider myself one.  This is only a means of sharing what has worked for me.  I also will add that if you are looking to lose weight, Dr. Oz and Dr. Roizen's book, "YOU: On a Diet" is a great place to start.  That book is an awesome read and it explains how the body functions in a very easy to understand way.  The illustrations are quite comical too!  This book is where I started and is still the foundation in which I choose how and what to eat on a daily basis.  Though I take a step farther, in that I insist that all our foods be of a natural origin.  I refuse to use any sweeteners, sugar only when necessary and real butter.  I don't like the idea of eating any chemicals that I can't pronounce or don't know what they are or their origin.  If foods contain more ingredients than I can count on my hand, I put it back.

Today, the scale reads 158lbs.  I find it funny that I am my pre-pregnancy size, but not the pre-pregnancy weight.  Though working out has built muscles that I didn't know were there and we all know that muscle weighs more than fat, so I keep reminding myself of this.  If I do happen to continue to lose any weight, I would consider it the cherry on top, but for now I am very happy!  This has been a goal that has been three years in the making.

Most of all, I hope that my struggles and success will be helpful to someone and I wish those who are struggling now, much success!!