When my daughter was about two years old, I met the love of my life. I could go on for pages and pages about how much I love my husband and how wonderful he is to me and our daughters, but that's not the point of this blog. By the time I met Chris, I was living at home and commuting to school, while he was living in a dorm on campus. We frequently got together and went out to eat during the early months of our relationship, which didn't help my diet, but that was no longer my main focus.
Chris was a bigger guy too, and he never made me feel uncomfortable about my weight. He made me feel so beautiful that I stopped worrying about my weight all together. I was busy all the time. Between being a mom, studying and lesson planning, preparing for student teaching, spending time with Chris, I never had a spare moment, but I kept up my three times a week workout sessions at Curves
When my final semester of college came around, I had to basically go out and buy a new wardrobe because I had to dress "professionally" for student teaching. I was physically sick at the thought of clothes shopping. Chris went with me and helped me by bringing me clothes to try on. I remember taking a bunch of size 20s into the dressing room with me and trying them on and discovering they were too big! That was one of the most unexpectedly happy moments of my life. I actually had to send him out to find me the same pants in a size 18. I felt great about myself and all that I had accomplished.
When my final semester of college came around, I had to basically go out and buy a new wardrobe because I had to dress "professionally" for student teaching. I was physically sick at the thought of clothes shopping. Chris went with me and helped me by bringing me clothes to try on. I remember taking a bunch of size 20s into the dressing room with me and trying them on and discovering they were too big! That was one of the most unexpectedly happy moments of my life. I actually had to send him out to find me the same pants in a size 18. I felt great about myself and all that I had accomplished.
I wasn't skinny by any means, but I felt that I had come a long way.. I finished out the year of student teaching, and was hired to teach English at the high school from which I had graduated five years earlier. I made two major mistakes after I began teaching full time. The first mistake was that I stopped working out. I was so overwhelmed as a first year teacher with all the paperwork and the extra meetings, that I didn't feel I had time to give to myself. The second mistake was eating breakfast and lunch in the school cafeteria. Those meals were far from balanced and healthy, and by the end of my first year, I had gained about 30 lbs.
My first year of teaching wasn't all bad though. I had a lot of satisfaction from my job, and by the end of the year, I had a new last name. Chris and I were married that March, and it was truly the happiest moment of my life.
My first year of teaching wasn't all bad though. I had a lot of satisfaction from my job, and by the end of the year, I had a new last name. Chris and I were married that March, and it was truly the happiest moment of my life.
Seven months after we were married, Chris and I decided to add to our little family. My pregnancy with my second daughter was so different than my pregnancy with my first daughter. I was happy and less stressed, and I was completely supported. When I got pregnant, I weighed around 280 lbs. I actually lost weight over the course of my pregnancy, and weighed around 267 when my daughter was born. My midwife was actually concerned about the fact that I lost so much weight, but I wasn't dieting or restricting my calories or anything like that. I wasn't even really exercising, so I am not sure why I lost so much weight, but I wasn't about to complain. My daughter was born healthy, and that was all that mattered to me.
After I had my daughter, I put on all the weight that I had lost and then some. Once again, breastfeeding was a great choice, but did nothing to help me melt off the pounds. When she was about 6 months old, I decided that I had to do something to change where I was headed, and not just for me, but for my family as well. Chris had been recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. I wanted to find something that we could both do that would benefit us both and help us lose the extra weight we were packing around.
I asked Chris if he would consider trying Weight Watchers. He was iffy about it at first, with Weight Watchers not being a "guy" program. However, he told me that he would do it with me if I wanted him to. We found a Saturday morning meeting in a nearby town, and started going. My starting weight was 298 lbs, my new heaviest weight. His starting weight around 319 lbs. He did amazing and lost weight ridiculously fast. We stuck with Weight Watchers a little over a year, and he dropped around 109 lbs, and effectively put his diabetes into remission, no longer having to take any medication to maintain his blood sugar. I only managed to lose about 47 lbs. No matter what, I still couldn't break that 250 lb plateau.
I asked Chris if he would consider trying Weight Watchers. He was iffy about it at first, with Weight Watchers not being a "guy" program. However, he told me that he would do it with me if I wanted him to. We found a Saturday morning meeting in a nearby town, and started going. My starting weight was 298 lbs, my new heaviest weight. His starting weight around 319 lbs. He did amazing and lost weight ridiculously fast. We stuck with Weight Watchers a little over a year, and he dropped around 109 lbs, and effectively put his diabetes into remission, no longer having to take any medication to maintain his blood sugar. I only managed to lose about 47 lbs. No matter what, I still couldn't break that 250 lb plateau.
Weight Watchers was a good program, and it obviously worked for us. However, a couple of things happened that threw us completely off track. The first was that my husband lost his job and we could no longer afford the membership fees. We had to stop going to meetings, but we were pretty confident that, after having successfully doing the program for a year, we could stick with it on our own. Then a huge chain of tragedies rocked our world. In a short period of time, a student of ours that we were very close with was killed in a car wreck, my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, my cousin was killed in Afghanistan, the cat we'd had since we had been married disappeared, and Chris had no luck finding a new job. We both sank into a depression, and Chris, like me, is an emotional eater. We ate our pain. We both began slowly gaining back the weight we had lost, and within a year or so, we were both heavier than we were when we started. We have yo-yo'd around since then, and we are both struggling with our weight on a daily basis.