Fighting the Weight - Part 1

I don't talk about my weight a lot on this blog.  Yes, the blog is called "Racing It Off" but it isn't referring to weight.  Running for me is a huge stress reliever.  It keeps me sane.  The blog title refers to stress and anxiety and worry and pretty much everything that flees from your mind when it's you and the pavement. 

The reason I don't talk about weight much here is because in the grand scheme of things, I just hope to help inspire people to get out there and run.  I don't care what size you are.  Everyone can run, but not everyone does.  And the reason I rarely touch on my personal weight loss is because I have no great Cinderella story.  There are definitely some majorly inspiring stories out there with regards to weight-loss.  Katie and Jen come to mind.

But here's a little background.  Pre-kids (9 years ago), I was around 150 lbs.  (I'm 5'11").  My weight has always fluctuated a lot.  I seem to gain weight quite easily (my college years were a 30 lb yo-yo).  At 150, I was pretty fit (although not nearly as fit as I feel now).  Then baby one.  Gained about 60 lbs during the pregnancy... 15 of which stuck around.  Didn't really do much exercise in between.  Repeat this story 2 more times... gained 60 lbs with each pregnancy... kept about 15 lbs after each one.  Topping me out at 196 lbs.  This was my weight up until baby #3 was 8 months old (January 2009).    (I tried to find a photo of me at this weight, but apparently, I hid from the cameras... couldn't find a single one.  But the one to the right after baby #2, so it's pretty close to the same...)

My friend Eve and I decided it was time to lose some weight and became one another's accountability partners.   After about 2 months of very light eating, I was down to 180 lbs.  A 16 lb. loss.  Obviously, not the healthiest weight loss because I was really eating probably too few calories and felt hungry all the time.  Ugh.

In late February 2009, I started attending a bootcamp type fitness program at 5am, 3 days a week.  On 2 of my off days, I would run - usually 45-80 minutes (I couldn't care less about mileage at that point).  I was slow and often scattered lots of walking throughout that period... usually not running more than 1 mile at a time.  (The bootcamp also included a fair amount of running.)  Three months later in May 2009, I weight in at 164 (down 32 lbs), and commited to running my first half-marathon.

(This photo was just after I finished boot camp.)

Between May 2009 and December 2011 despite my 1500 miles of running in that time period, my weight stayed stagnant... well except the standard 2-3 lb fluctuations.  On January 1, 2011 after a Christmas of eating and very little running (I was pooped from my Dec. 5 marathon), I was up just a smidge to 168.

As most people do, on January 1, 2011, I declared that it was time to finish my loss (it was one of my 2011 goals on this blog).  My original goal was 150, and I let myself stay stagnant at the mid-160s.  And I again procrastinated this goal until my training for marathon #2 started in mid-February.  But then I took on the challenge.  For the first 2 weeks, I just tried to be a little more conscious of what I was eating... then by week 3, I started calorie counting (something I've always thought I'd loathe).  We're now on week 8 of marathon training, and I'm happy to say that this morning I weighed in at 156... down 12 lbs. 

To be continued with the details of the "how"...