Through crew I became a pretty serious athlete while I was in high school. I learned how to push myself and how to weight train. (I also played tennis and other miscellaneous sports, but they didn't sculpt my body and work ethic the way crew did.) My weight varied from the low 130s to about 145 lbs while in high school. I never felt I was thin, or even a normal weight, but I also wasn't terribly self-conscious. I knew I was very physically fit and felt I performed well athletically in comparison with my peers. I didn't watch what I was eating much, but the culture in my family was to eat homemade foods and very little junk food (I've never liked soda and we weren't allowed to have chips, for instance).
All that work ethic rather went out the window in college. I didn't work out regularly - just played tennis sporadically, went to the gym on and off, and weight-trained practically not at all. I also ate pretty much whatever and however much I wanted at the dining hall for all four years, although for the most part I did not eat outside of mealtimes. Shockingly, I graduated in 2007 at more or less the same weight that I came in at.
My metabolism really changed after college. I lived with my parents for about seven months right after I graduated so I was back to eating similar food to my childhood. I had a three-hour round trip commute to my job, which left no time for working out, and I no longer had gym access. I gained weight steadily through those months and after I moved closer to work. I was applying to grad school during that time and in the early spring went shopping for business casual clothes for my interviews. I realized I had gone up a clothing size (to a 12), which alerted me to the fact that I had gained weight.
I embarked on a weight-loss project in the spring and summer of 2008 that was quite successful. I went from a bit under 155 lbs to a bit over 130 lbs (size 12 to size 8). I did it strictly through calorie-counting and frequent exercise (aerobic and weights), with days off every couple weeks. I loved that I was able to completely control my own pantry for the first time in my life. My goal for that project was to get to 130 lbs by the time I went on a cruise vacation with some friends in August 2008, which I more or less achieved. Right after that vacation I moved for graduate school and the weight began to slowly creep back on. At first it was all the free food the school was pushing on us - then it was late nights on campus doing homework fueled by dinners from on-campus eateries - then it was more frequent meals with my then-boyfriend that were much less healthy/portion-controlled than I had been eating the previous year. I didn't gain weight very fast but all of it came back eventually.
One key point was when I got engaged in December 2009. I had a half-hearted thought that I should try to slim down for our wedding, but that was quickly drowned out by all the work we had to do. We had a five-month engagement that was packed with planning for our local wedding and reception as well as a long-distance reception. Particularly as the wedding drew near, my fiance and I started eating out more frequently for convenience. I was somewhere around 155 lbs on our wedding day.
It got even worse after we were married! Even though I started cooking a lot more at home, I somehow felt like I had to keep up with my husband, always eating half of the the meal I had cooked. I also was living, for basically the first time in my life, with a lot of junk food. My husband liked to keep ice cream and chips and cookies around almost constantly. He was able to keep those foods nearby without eating enormous portions of them every day, but I wasn't. I irrationally thought that if I didn't chow down now that the food would be gone before I could have what I wanted. I call the weight I gained my "love weight" because we were very happy - I wasn't stressed or anything - it was just a by-product of us moving in together.
All through the fall of 2010 I knew I was getting quite large. I had to go up a dress size for some weddings we attended (back to a 12) and then even those got tight. I started avoiding pictures, which I love to take and be in. And then one day something just flipped in my brain and I was ready to change. I set a goal to go from 172.6 lbs to 125 lbs in one year, starting November 12, 2010. I called it "50 Pounds in 50 Weeks."
No comments:
Post a Comment