My Weight Loss Story

I guess you could say that I pretty much fell into my weight loss program by accident.  Although I wanted to lose weight, I had no desire to start a diet and workout program.  However, as fate would have it a group of my coworkers decided to get together and have a contest to see who could lose the most amount of weight over a two month period.  Everybody pitched in $25.00 and whoever lost the most amount of weight at the end of the two months won the jackpot.  The rules for the contest were pretty simple, you could do any diet program that you wanted but could not use any type of fat burning product to help you lose the weight (you read that right diet and exercise only!). 

If my memory serves me correctly I believe the contest started on November 19, 2005 and ended on January 22, 2006. That’s right, over the Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years holidays - yuck!  My first thought was that there is no way that I would enter this contest because I didn’t believe “I” could win. You see, I have struggled with my weight for just about my entire life.

When I was growing up some of my family members seemed to be more concerned with my weight then I was and would let me know when I was gaining weight. I remember I would always try out some crazy fad diet. For example, there was one diet where I didn’t eat for a week.  You read that right, 7 days of no food, only water. So I eventually became obsessed with food but didn’t like to eat in front of people.  I was afraid of receiving comments like “Are you going to eat that” or “Do you really need that” and my personal favorite “Don’t you think you have had enough”. Food had a BIG hold on me for the majority of my life and I didn’t know if I could stop the junk food for this diet. It was hard!

However, I spoke with my husband about the contest and he encouraged me to give it a try and said that he would diet with me during the contest.  My husband use to be a competitive bodybuilder so he came up with one of his old diet and workout routines to get me started.  I decided to enter the contest and in the first 2 weeks I lost 10 pounds just by eating 5-6 meals a day and working out 4-5 days a week. I was shocked!  Most of the people in the contest saw that I had lost 10 pounds and got a little discouraged. Some of my coworkers would tell me that I was taking this “diet” too seriously.  Even some of my family and friends told me that I should not get my hopes up, that I should just do the best that I can. The more weight that I lost the more determined I became to win. By the end of the contest I lost 28 pounds and won the jackpot of $275.00.

My husband and I talked about continuing the diet and we made some long-term goals for our family. My first goal was that “I WANTED to be in a bikini” by summer time. Unfortunately right before summer my husband tore his peck. Stress alone can change up things and I continued to eat clean and work out when I could while he was recovering.  I then made a decision to relax over the summer since I wanted to spend more time with my kids. I kept eating clean but I did start to slowly bump up my carbs. Also during the summer months I went to the gym for only 2-3 days a week. Although I did cut back on my exercise program I was able to maintain my weight loss which at that time was around 40 pounds.

Once the kids went back to school, I was back at full force. The second time around on this diet has been more challenging but I am still going for the bikini!!!!!  What I like about my goals this time around is that I am now competing against myself. I look forward to my weigh in and measurements on Saturday mornings. But then again I get to eat junk food on Saturdays . I will talk more about this at another time.

Stay tuned as I continue with my weight loss goals!  Click here for my weight loss blog