Maintenance

January 7, 2014 marks my two year anniversary date since hitting my goal weight. I’ve learned much during this journey and I share it all with you in a very special Heather Weighs In episode.

I wanted to share some of my personal weight loss history with you. I hope this post makes a visual point of demonstrating that it doesn’t matter how many times you “fail,” it only matters that you never give up.

It is possible to go from battling your weight your whole life to achieving a healthy weight. Even if you’ve never done it before, or if you are like me and have gotten there, but don’t know how to stay there.

Here I am at about 2 years old. I started the way most of us do: thin and healthy. I was so thin my grandmother jokes with me to this day that I was the only little girl she knew who needed suspenders to hold up her pants.

The problem for me was I was emotionally sad at a very young age. I felt like I had little control over it. So how did I deal with these negative emotions? I started my love/hate relationship with food. I loved to eat. It made me feel better in the moment. But I hated how it changed my body and the guilt I often felt afterward.

The weight came on slowly. But it became noticeable to me around second or third grade.

Looking back over my elementary school photos I noticed that I don’t look genuinely happy. It’s sad to see a little girl filled with so much pain.

As I got closer to puberty, I noticed my weight still increased even though I was a fairly active kid.

I don’t have many photos of me at my heaviest in high school. But I weighed 225 pounds my freshman year. I went on an extreme calorie diet and over exercised out of pure desperation.

As you can see from this photo taken at my Junior year prom in high school, the results of my desperation paid off in the short term. I weighed approximately what I weigh now, and I felt like a “normal” person for the first time in my young life. (And yes, that’s my future hubby…with hair. We dated in high school.)

However, I was struggling to keep the weight off. I hadn’t yet learned the art of maintenance.

This is me just a few years later. I had the moment in the pretty dress, and I knew what it was like to be smaller and get attention from boys and feel good in my skin.

But that all went away when I went back to my old eating habits and stopped exercising. Here I am about 290 pounds. This weight gain occurred in the span of only a few years. It didn’t just hurt physically, but it was devastating to me emotionally and mentally too.

Compounding the problem, my hubby and I decided to lose weight together. He far surpassed me as you can see in this photo from 2004. He got down to his goal weight and I was staying in the 250-290 pounds range. I knew how to lose weight, but felt so defeated because I’d gained it all back in such a short time.

I stayed this size for years.

The day after having my first son I stepped on the scale and found out I weighed 313 pounds. I finally decided to fight for myself, but I knew I needed to do it differently. I decided I’d focus on maintaining my weight, not just losing it. I could not handle the pain of gaining it all back again. I had to deal with the issues that made me want to self-medicate with food in the first place.

Now, I’m proud to be two years at my goal weight. I hover between 150-155 pounds and I feel amazing!

I started in 2008 really tracking my progress and my waist was 48 inches back then. Today my waist is 30 inches. That means I lost one-and-a-half feet from my waist. I’ve managed to build muscle too and I’m so happy and grateful with all my progress.

It is possible. You can do this. If you want to know what I do now to maintain my weight, I urge you to listen to my the latest Heather Weighs In (episode 8).

Below are just some of the documents that reflect more than a decade of starting and stopping my weight loss journey.

Even though these documents aren’t “flattering” I need to share them with you. If you’re like me, you have a drawer in your home where you keep these type of documents safely hidden. And they represent all the times you took a shot at getting what you really wanted but fell short.

You may look at them from time to time and wonder why you’re not able to get to your goal weight. I know I did.

But now I see them as symbols. They show me that even if I fail or fall short of my goals it doesn’t mean the goal is impossible to achieve. It just means I need to keep trying and take the time to learn how to get where I want to go.

Whenever you look at your own records or photos, realize that, one day, you’ll view them as badges of honor for a job well done. Like battle scars proving you never gave up the fight.

Be patient and kind with yourself. Look at photos from when you were young and innocent. Fight for that little kid inside you who wants to be free.

You can do this!