How I Lost Twelve Pounds in January

 

Losing weight is hard.  I’ve been working on it since I was twelve.  As a woman who has struggled with her weight since childhood, believe me, I KNOW everything there is to know.  Doing it, however, is another matter.  So, as the New Year began, I decided to start small.  Let me introduce you to my journey with weight. 

Okay, I am fat.  Let’s put that out there right now, I am a very obese person.  Medical issues as a tween/teenager led to excessive weight gain and I graduated high school at almost 250 lbs.  From age eighteen to twenty-two, I maintained 250 pounds.

When my husband and I met, I began going out to eat with him a couple times a week and slowly moved up the scale.  In two years I had gained forty pounds.  Then, I got pregnant.  Pregnancy actually caused me to lose weight and I gave birth at 275 pounds.  After I went back to work, I was waking up 1-2 times a night with my daughter and working 50 hours a week during the day.  I was eating every meal out.

I eventually found myself staying up half the night when I began graduate school.  At that point, caffeine became my best friend.  Not coffee, I never could bring myself to drink the stuff.  Rather, I turned to diet Coke, three to four times a day, 64 ounces each time.

I was burning the candle at both ends and so very heavy, I’m ashamed to put the number out there for the public.  I finished graduate school in June of 2011.  However, I was working close to 60 hours as the demands on my job grew.  Then I quit.  My family needed me whole.  After a summer of playing and a fall of figuring out how our new life was going to work out, the holiday season was upon us. 

Finally, I made a HUGE step.  I eliminated caffeine.  December 29^th, 2012 was my last soda.  Today marks 33 days without caffeine and I feel so much better.  The first couple weeks were awful.  However, one week after eliminating soda I had lost EIGHT pounds!  I made one other step as well.  I tried the pantry challenge Jessica Fisher had over at http://lifeasmom.com.  With little exception, we ate all meals from home, made from scratch, for the month of January. 

Twelve pounds and one month later, I am a much happier woman.  I was out of bed and productive for four of the last five mornings.  I am sleeping more regularly.  Greasy fast food does not even sound good.  My caffeine cravings are gone.  And I am ready for the next step!