Weight loss journey ... one year later

I've been wanted to do a post about our weight loss journey and how we got to where we are. It seems fitting to do this post today because it has been a year since we started. We were both overweight, tired and too busy with our large family to change anything. Kyle and I have been through a lot and I don't think anyone would fault us if we said we didn't have time to work out or try and eat better. See we've had 6 children in 8 years and have fostered 8 babies along the way. We also homeschool so I don't get much of a break from the kids all day leaving Kyle on full-time daddy duty when he gets home so that I can decompress. So what changed? This time last year I was sick and tired of being overweight. I had plantar facetious, heal spurs, bad knees and many other symptoms from being morbidly obese. I decided that this was it and that I needed to change things. You see Kyle and I had decided that we were going to have any more babies of our own, and I wasn't very happy about it. I decided that if I couldn't be pregnant I might as well be fit.

For me this has been a life change. See Kyle was a healthy weight when we were married but I was already obese. I had been a small child, like tiny, and I didn't put on any weight until grade 11. By the time I graduated high school I was already one of the biggest girls. It didn't stop there. Years of fast food, binge eating and unhealthy food choices pushed me up the scale. When Kyle and I were married I was at 220. We quickly got pregnant and my weight went up and down over the next 8 years and 6 pregnancies. I always took pregnancy as my free pass to eat anything and everything in large amounts. I couldn't tell you how heavy I was pregnant because all of the scales I used stopped at 300 pounds. Fast forward to October 2010 and I was weighing in at 270 pounds and 5'7".  Kyle had done his fair share of eating with me and had gone up to 215 at his highest. So we changed. I have to tell you that when I want to do something I go all in. It is everything or nothing. Once we started there was no going back.

To begin with we changed our diet. We started counting calories and made sure that each meal contained a good amount of protein. We used an app called My Net Diary to track what we ate and how many calories total we ate per day. We stopped eating fast food and really only ate Subway if we had to eat when we were out. It also really helped that we ate every 3 hours. For me I ate 300 calories every 3 hours focusing on getting enough protein so that I would feel full. It worked. Kyle and I started to drop somewhere around 2 pounds per week. In March we started learning to run and now as we continue to work towards losing those last pounds. Now we have to balance eating enough to fuel our running and still maintaining a calorie deficit to lose weight. It has been an amazing ride. There have been bumps in the road and some days and even weeks when it seemed that nothing was going right. I have always lived in fear that  the weight may come back. Running has helped so much. Not so much with weight loss (I am so hungry when I am running a lot of miles), but it has grounded me. I am less stressed and more happy. I don't need to eat to make me feel better I can go out and run. There are still days when too much food and not enough moving happens and I go up in weight. As of right now I have been maintaining a weight between 152-157. I would still like to lose some and I am now getting back into watching what I eat fully. It is helpful too that I have backed off my mileage while learning to barefoot run. I am not so hungry now and find it easier to create a calorie deficit.

Anyways the journey continues and hopefully soon we will both meet our weight loss goals, while we work towards it we are having the time of our lives. It is amazing how good it feels to be fit and healthy. I am so blessed that I was able to change my life and reverse the ill effects I had from being so heavy. I never in a million years thought that I could run and now I enjoy it every chance I get.

Kyle before 215lbs

Kyle after 165lbs

Robbie before 270lbs

Robbie After 153lbs