Yoyo

I grew up being the chubby kid in school. I wasn't totally unatheletic, I danced when I was little and moved into swimming and then in middle school switched to tennis as my sport of choice. My poor parents walked the line of trying to subtly push me to eat better and exercise more without coming out and saying I was fat.

In college it didn't get any better. I moved away to a school so far away that the only way to come home was to fly. I was in a new climate, in a new culture, and trying to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up. I gained the freshmen 15 and never even tried to lose it. I probably went to the gym a total of maybe 10 times my freshmen year in college. And it didn't get any better sophomore, middler (I went to a 5 year school), and junior year. I'd go through spurts of super stressful times when I'd turn to the gym for a little while or forget to eat 3 meals a day (I know, I know, not healthy at all!) and I'd lose some weight. But overall I gained a lot of weight in college.

Then I went home for Christmas senior year of college and I had to special order new pants from the internet because I didn't fit into the sizes most stores stocked. It was at this point that I had an awakening. I WAS FAT.

I went back to college with a mission. My last semester didn't look too terrible in terms of my workload so I signed up for Jillian Michael's online training for a few weeks. But it just wasn't working for me. I needed to find something (or someone) who would motivate me to stay on track. So I signed up for a personal trainer at my school's gym. It was a great deal for a personal trainer but I was a student making no money so it was a tough decision to pay for it (my parents wouldn't even help! Which in the end was probably a good decision because I was determined to get every penny's worth!). 

My personal trainer taught me so much about how to eat right and exercise, and even how to use the scary weight machines! In the end I lost 20 pounds over the 10 weeks I had a trainer and another 10 throughout the rest of the year. I started a job, got a boyfriend, started a Master's degree program and lost track of the day to day gym and never had time to prepare my own food! Since then I've yo-yoed back and forth over another 10 pound range but never getting back over the net -30 mark! 

Fast forward 2.5 years. Going to the gym is a chore, I still hate cooking for myself and rarely do, and I'm just not very happy with anything in my life. Work was hard, my school work was overwhelming and the condo I bought was not really a home. I just had no motivation because it felt like everything I did in my life just ended up in a total failure. At this point I was heavily relying on my anti stress eating (when I get stressed I don't eat crap, I just forget to eat most of the time, and once again, I know it's bad!) to lose weight. I tried getting another personal trainer but she just wasn't as effective and didn't really seem to care like my first trainer did (I still talk to my 1st personal trainer, that's how much she cared about me as a client!). 

I needed to find a new motivation to keep my health in check....