I'm giving in....

So for the past year or so my friend, Jenn has been telling me I just had to create my own blog. I only sort of wanted to but it felt like it would be another chore that I would have to keep up with all the time. Another site and app to add to my already full smart phone. I knew I had a story to tell, one that could help others as well as myself. So for the first time in years I started to journal again and finally decided I should listen to Jenn and give in. I would blog about my 7 year long transformation from a 300 pound teenager to a complete and total health and wellness freak. What's the worst that could happen? No one reads this, well then I will just stop writing.

I guess I have to give you a little bit of background on how I became the girl everyone affectionately...well meanly called Shamoo or Tons of Fun. I had a pretty sad childhood. My dad was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) when I was a kid and was sick the majority of my childhood until he passed away in 2001. To say I was an emotional eater is probably an understatement. We all know that food is a comfort, it makes us feel better when you're sad. Sugar and caffeine can make anyone perk up when they're down. It also was the one thing I could control in a completley out of control enviroment. Since my dad was sick my mom worked around the clock to provide for us and since we were kids all we wanted to eat was crap! Of course that is totally fine because the crap food, the highly processed food with ingredients I can't even pronounce...those foods? Well they're cheap as dirt! (I'll blog about that later) Since we were on a budget the cabinets were always full of this cheap stuff. Frozen pizzas, Doritos, Pepsi, Ramen noodles, cookies, Mac & cheese. If its bad for you, I ate it and ate a ton of it!! I will never forget the day I joined Weight Watchers and they showed me what a real portion size was. I was a girl who could scarf down a whole Wendy's triple cheeseburger and fries and a soda. I could eat an entire box of mac and cheese and want more. When I learned that a 1/2 cup of mac & cheese was a serving and 300 and some calories I was floored to learn that I was taking in almost all of my daily calories in one sitting!

With the stress of my home life,the lack of healthy (and cheap) options and all around ignorance is it any wonder I was tipping the scale at around 300 pounds and rocking a size 24 jean? Things got even worse after my dad passed away. For about a year I dipped head first into any food that reminded me of my childhood. I remember the week my dad was in the hospital for the last time the only foods I would touch were the worst ones. I would eat boxes and boxes of mac and cheese and drink gallons of kool aid. These were foods that reminded me of being a kid and they comforted me. Well that downward spiral went on for almost two years and in those two years not only did I devour comfort food by the trough I discovered something else that packs the pounds on lazy people...alcohol. Like most high school kids I played around with things found in the parents liquor cabinets and conned older siblings into buying booze for us.

Things began to change for me Sophomore year of high school. I found another outlet of expressing myself. I joined the drama club at my high school and found solace in pretending to be someone else for a while. The drinking stopped but my eating was still out of control. Another factor I think that lead to my atrocious diet were my brothers. I was around boys 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I had and have two brothers, all boy cousins and mostly male friends. So watching the guys shovel in these mass amounts of crap food made me think I could do it too! Right?!? Hahhahahahahhahahaha you've got to learn to laugh at your own stupidity because otherwise we'd cry. Yeah no, its proven that men need more calories because they burn more. They're bigger and most of the time stronger than we are. (I now work at a gym so yes my feminist friends I know there are women out there who could break men. I'm one of them!) So learning I couldn't do what the boys did and stay as flippin skinny as them was a real eye opener as well. But then something happened, it was a small thing. A small comment from someone I love more than life that set me over the edge. My Papaw, the greatest granddad in the world, and I were talking one day. We were looking at the baby pictures of all the grandkids and I made one of those silly comments like "Ohhh wasn't I cute as a kid...what happened? hahaha" It was a joke, the other grandkids said stuff like that all the time. Well, you know how someone can say something, anything and it can stick with you forever?? Well my Papaw's response did. I will never in all my years forget this. He said to me "You just got too big Annie" (insert shocked face here) No one had ever been that honest with me about how I looked. Of course there had been constant teasing and mean spirited kids from elementary all the way to high school but never blunt honesty. That changed everything!

In January 2003 I started my first in an endless ring diets.I began with the Atkins diet...we all know where this is headed. Lots of meat, lots of veggies, lots of quick and unsustainable weight loss. Then came South Beach, basically the same thing with a few exceptions and then it was Weight Watchers. Now those people got it right! Eat healthier, watch your portions and exercise! Well I could totally do the eat right thing. I learned to love some healthy food! Grilled chicken, endless veggies and fruit, what's not to love?!?! The exercise part...Oh my God I hated exercise! Without even stepping one foot in the gym I went from a size 24 to 18 by the time I graduated high school and through college got down to a size 14. I was totally okay with that size for most of my college years, it was a vast improvement from where I had been. Then things began ticking around in my head. It seemed to me that I was always the fattest girl in the room, I was the biggest of all my friends. All my girlfriends could trade clothes except for me. Little things like this began to add up and then Senior year I noticed I had started gaining weight. I didn't gain the Freshman 15, I gained the Senior 15. It was living off campus and driving everywhere along with all the booze that did it. After graduation I began researching what to do how to do it? Then in the fall of 2009 one of my girlfriends from school, who was a little smaller than me, said she was taking these great pills and the weight was just falling off her. She was losing weight like crazy thanks to these "natural" pills. Well of course being me, I looked into it. I stopped looking after I saw the price. I pondered over this for a while, talked to my mom (a nurse) and then thought. "I can do this without the pills." My size 14 self, all 220 pounds of me was going to get into shape and not use pills!!!

January 2010 I started. I revamped my diet...yes again and I started keeping a food journal. I gave myself 1500 calories a day and logged every bite that went into my mouth. That part has been and always will be easy for me. Then the exercise came....uhhhhhhh! I made myself walk 30 minutes a day. Then over time I began jog/walk intervals. Then in the spring my friend introduced me to his workout BOXING!!!!!!!!!!!!! Boxing changed my life. It was exercise that I loved! After I got boxing down we did running intervals. Then in December of 2011 my relationship with my friend ended abruptly (personal reasons I dont wish to disclose on the internet) and I had to find another exercise outlet.

I always said that I will never, ever, never be a runner....guess what? I'M A RUNNER! I love it! There is nothing as freeing as throwing on some shoes, sticking in some headphones and running until your heart gives out (not literally). Running became my solace in a really hard time. My relationship ending was the most painful and upsetting thing I had dealt with since the death of my father. This time I found a healthy outlet, exercise! It helped me survive, its helped me thrive and exercise has even lead me to new job opportunities.

I can proudly say that the girl whose BMI in high school was in the morbidly obese range is now considered an athlete. My body fat is 19.6% and I worked every damn bit of it off with blood sweat and tears. I'm not an expert, I'm not even a licensed trainer (not yet anyway hehehe) but there are things I know and can share with you if anyone is interested. I did it with guts and sheer will and learning that there is nothing too big to conquer. If I can do it anyone can.

(Oh and a side note...yes I know I have horrible grammar and spelling. If I mess up forgive me)

Love, Annie