There and back again-as of February 14th

Anyone that knows me, knows my thoughts go from here to there and back again and my hands can't keep up with them. So I'll say I'm sorry now if something doesn't make much sense. Also, if something doesn't make sense it's cause I posted this for MFP-which I'll explain later on-I re-read some of this but I'm at work(shhh!) so don't have time to re-read the whole thing and make sure it makes sense for my FB friends.

This past Tuesday night (the 12th), I had one of those "so this is how I really look/others see me" moments. So what did I do? I brought out my phone and took the photo.

There have been easy days and hard days. Days I've loved doing this and days I just wanted to give up. But I didn't-I kept going.How is beyond me at times.

Before I start in, let me do a bit of a background on me. In 7th grade, I became anorexic. To the point that one of my boyfriends told my mother in 9th grade-for most of high school I'd go back and forth between being ok and being skin and bones (although no one ever said much or noticed...it probably helped that I wore clothes that were too big and baggy, ok not really skin and bones but a lot less than I should have been). Senior year in high school I was doing ok, a normal weight and I was ok with it. Then I went to Vermont for college and all hell broke lose. It took me years to get to a point where I was ok with my body. So even though I knew I went from one end to the other, I was scared to try to lose weight because of how easy it would be for me to fall back into the anorexic mind set. I'm happy to say, I did it-I was able to lose weight and eat and never once did any of those thoughts enter my head. I was amazed with myself!

Last July (the 6th to be exact), I joined MFP. (side note for those who don't know since I posted this on MFP-MFP is MyFitnessPal, a few website and app that helps you track your food, workouts, ect. I've made some really close friends there who have helped me through everything).  Why did I join? Well, that's simple. Work sent out one of their monthly health related emails about losing weight and they talked about how one of the guys and his wife from another office joined MFP and they lost something like 70 pounds each in X months (I don't remember the time frame). I was slow at work and figured I'd check it out. Bam, that's all I needed. That little push that I had been wanting, no, NEEDING for so long.

At this time, Marc and I started running. I had always wanted to be a runner but never knew anything about pace and breathing, Marc used to run track and cross country in high school so he taught me. And pushed me when I needed it. Now I can't get enough running!

I knew I needed to lose weight, I wasn't happy with how I looked but if I didn't look at myself too long in the mirror, let pictures get taken of me or even see pictures of myself, I could deny I was where I was.

When I joined, I was 5'2" and 160 pounds-although honestly I think I was closer to 165/170. My BMI at the time was 29.3 which put me as overweight. Anything above 30 for me was in the obese status-I was .7 away from being thought of as obese. Talk about an eye opener!

It took awhile to get things figured out of course I did the whole 1200 calories cause that's where MFP put me at first, I did the 2 pounds per week. After 2 days I knew I wanted this to be a life style change not a DIET(I hate that word) I changed it to 1 pound per week for awhile. I lost a little but not much so I looked into BMR and TDEE. It took me awhile before I found helloitsdan's post and figured out it wasn't as hard to understand as I first thought.

The first photo for this that I have was taken August 21st 2012 at 154 pounds. I had to lose 6 pounds before I'd even take a picture of myself. Marc nd I visited some friends in Florida the beginning of September and by then I was about 150.

In August I started doing C25K and graduated that on September 4th. My first 5K race was September 30th. November 26th I started doing some weights but didn't get into it as much as I should have until the middle of December. I love my weight days almost as much as I love my running days.

It felt like forever until I got out of the overweight chart for my BMI. But I did it!

December 14th I was getting ready for work and was wearing a shirt Marc's sister had given me for Christmas-she wanted to see a picture since they were in Mexico for Christmas so I took one. This was the first time I had seen myself as me-I was 136 at this time and I almost cried. I was so surprised and sent Marc a text with the picture saying something like "thank you for believing in me, I see myself as you've been telling me for months now" Take about being worth it all!

Fast forward to last month-I met my goal of 130 pounds on January 23rd. My BMI is now 23.0 which makes it healthy. I also found out last month when I went to the doctors that I look great and she's very happy with my weight. and I'm 5'3" apparently not 5'2" like I had always been told (I made her measure me 3 times before I believed her, poor doctor! My first time seeing her and she probably thinks I'm crazy).

I did it. I'm doing it now. I had another moment of "damn, this was so worth it" tonight while I was bored and running on my treadmill at home. I felt sexy. Sweaty but sexy.

Edited 2/18/2013-
Over the weekend, I realized I didn’t put in what I do now since I wrote this for MyFitnessPal and they know what I do. So now, here is what I do: (let me know if you have any questions about any of them)
Mondays:  abs and back (planks, leg lifts, scissors, mason twists, in & outs, crunches, low row, double row, lat machines, shoulder press, butterfly)
Tuesdays: leg day (squats, lunges, leg extension, hamstring curls, incline on the treadmill if time)
Wednesday: rest day
Thursdays: abs and arms (planks, crunches, leg lifts, scissors, mason twists, dumbbell curls, adjustable pulley, triceps extension, triceps pull down,)
Fridays: leg day (squats, lunges, leg extension, hamstring curls, hip relaxer, incline on the treadmill if time)
Saturdays/Sundays: my “free” days which means I either run or do another day of abs/legs/back or whatever I feel like, sometimes a combo of running and arms.