The Beginning of my Journey

So I decided to start a blog. I tweet, I Facebook, why not blog right? My name is Miriam, but you can call me Mimi. I'm a 35 year old wife to an amazing husband and mother to  a 2 year old son. This will be about me and my quest to get back to my pre-baby weight and then some. Just a little bit about me and my struggles with my weight. When I was 14 I hit puberty and my body went crazy. So as they say I developed, particularly in my hips and butt. It was maddening growing up especially when you had one sister that was rail thin and another that was 5'8" and proportionate in her size. I could never borrow their clothes. Then I went to college where yes I did gain the freshman 15. Well since I was a transfer student I gained the junior 10. But I took an aerobic class one semester that got me on a exercise kick. I weighed 150 in college and a couple years after I decided I wanted to lose weight to try out for the Miami Dolphins cheerleading squad. I didn't make the squad but I did lose 15 pounds and was down to 135. I ran into some of my old college friends one day ad they couldn't believe how skinny I got. But what was so funny was I didn't feel that thin. I still saw my self as fat. But now that I'm way heavier when I look back at those pictures I couldn't believe that I didn't appreciate my size at the time.

Then I started dating my husband and what they say is true. When you are happy the pounds start coming. Over the 3 year time period we dated I gained 20 pounds. When we got engaged I was up to 170!! I worked out and got it down to about 165 and that was the weight I got married at and maintained that weight until I got pregnant. That was my carte blanche to eat whatever and whenever I wanted. I got up to a whopping 205 pounds. I couldn't believe it! But I quickly lost 20 lbs after I had my little peanut and stayed at 185lbs for a year and half. Then in May of 2010 I decided enough was enough. It was time to make some aggressive changes.

I finally made my way down to the gym at my job. Imagine that we have a free gym and in the 3 years I've worked there never set foot in it. I started going on my lunch break and sometimes after work to work out. I even had a couple co-workers join me. They lasted about 2 weeks before I was left alone they stopped coming with me.  But I trekked on. I bought a fitness DVD called the 30 Day Shred. Of course Ms. Jillian Michael's claim is that you will lose 20 lbs in 30 days using her DVD, now don't get me wrong I never believed that one could lose that much weight in that little time safely but she seemed real kickass.
I couldn't walk after the first workout! But I kept with it. I made the mistake and did 3 workouts in a row. Don't ever do that. Your body needs rest.  But I did start to see slight changes but the scale never moved! That was so frustrating. But after week 3 something amazing happened, my pants started getting looser on me.

That small little fact energized me like nothing else. Even if the scale didn't move there was progress being made. So I continued until I went on summer vacation in July. That threw me off my schedule because honestly who wants to exercise and worry about what they are eating while on vacation?? By then I had lost 6 pounds and my goal at that point was to not gain any weight rather than concentrate on losing. So that is what I did, even after I got back from vacation. It wasn't until September that I started getting serious again. I did a fitness bootcamp at least once a week, I lifted weights and did a little cardio. I hate sweating and I never used to sweat so much until after I had my baby. I wonder if that's connected. I should do some research on that. Now it doesn't take much for me to get drenched when working out. And it wreaks havoc on my hair! But that's another blog for another day.
 
I heard of this new fitness craze called Cardio Barre. It's a mix of pilates, cardio and ballet. I wanted to try it out because who doesn't want a dancers body?? But the classes were so expensive. So I asked my bootcamp instructor about it and she told me don't waste my money on those classes and just buy a tape called Ballet Bootcamp.I will tell you all about that journey in a future blog. So I incorporated that into my routine. But the weight still wasn't coming off like I wanted. I was stuck at 178 for over 2 months. So I did the most old fashion type of exercise I could think of.

I ran.

Yep, one time around my neighborhood for 2 days that week. And guess what? I dropped a whole pound that week. It was like God Oprah called it, a "AHA!" Moment. More cardio, why didn't I think of that sooner? I dropped 2 more pounds after that and then the dreaded season for all dieters came upon us. The holiday season. I will make separate blogs entries for that. And I purposely left out my nutritional habits for now also. You'll get plenty of that later. Don't want to bog you down on my first entry.

I haven't journaled in a while but I liked going back and reading my old entries. If only to point and laugh at how silly I was. This is what I hope will happen here. I hope that 6 months, a year from now when I've reached my goals I can look back on this blog and say, "What the heck was the matter with me?" If anyone is reading this I hope that I can also inspire you if you are trying to lose weight, or have battled with your weight, like in my case since I was 14 years old. Man can't believe it's been 20 years!  I just depressed myself. Where's my frozen yogurt?