Body Transformation: Body Image Blues

AGE 36 HEIGHT 5'9" WEIGHT 145 lbs BODY FAT 19% WAIST 29"	AGE 36 HEIGHT 5'9" WEIGHT 136 lbs BODY FAT 11.5% WAIST 26"

Why I Got Started

It was a period in my life where I needed to allow myself the luxury of being selfish if only for 90 minutes per day! I have always been active in tennis, swimming, cheerleading, and boxing (I come from a family of boxers).

Aside from always being active I battled with a poor body image for the majority of my teenage years and into my 20s I struggled with anorexia.

At 5-foot-9 and 95 pounds I was positive that I was fat - I could see it. It was a feat in and of itself to gain weight, to get to what I thought was a healthy 115 pounds, at 115 I felt like I had beat my issue. Amazing how your mind can play tricks on you! This is why I say the scale is not my friend. My journey to a new body also meant embarking on a new way of thinking.

Fast forward to my first pregnancy. I decided I didn't want to get pregnant until I knew I was mentally well enough that I wouldn't panic when I saw the scale go up. Somehow that didn't work so well because little me gained 10 pounds in the first 6 months … not bad, and then BAM gained 65 pounds more by the time I delivered. (Scale definitely wasn't my friend then either!)

Somehow I thought it would just disappear since weight was never an issue for me, I learned quickly that is not how it works! I was back to my pre-pregnancy body in 11 months, just in time to get pregnant again! I had a small stroke at the same time and so all of my attention was focused on my health, pregnancy and watching my 1-year old, exercise fell to the back burner, actually the doctors suggested I didn't work out as a precaution.

I gained 65 pounds, lost it all, did a triathlon by the 10 month mark and found out I was pregnant again! I gained 60 pounds. Again, I Iost all the weight in about 9 months and someone had a little operation to ensure I wasn't pregnant again within a year!

I have NEVER been as depressed or hated myself and my body as I did when I had all the weight on. I didn't even eat junk food, I ate HUGE amounts of carbs and protein, I thought because I ate healthy I wouldn't gain like I did - I missed the portion control memo. So that was my struggle with weight gain in both ways.

How I Did It

In 2009 I was separated and divorced. I quickly learned that a bad divorce is like a trip to hell and back and it almost got the best of me. Until I met my now husband Joe, he revamped me so to speak.

By my 36th birthday, a year and a half into our relationship things hit an all-time low in my life (my post-divorce garbage) and I needed something that was not drama filled, didn't revolve around my kids, my man, my career, my ex, my mounting post-divorce issues, something that just revolved around me, without feeling guilty about it because I had lost me.

With Joe's help and encouragement I began the transformation challenge. He supported my change from the inside out. When I met him I had been working with a trainer for almost 8 months, I was 124 pounds, a year and a half later when I started the challenge I was 145 - wine was my evening companion.

As a trainer and the man who has to look at me daily I trusted his judgment, he put me on a strict meal plan, zero wine, and a ballbuster routine (I asked for NO mercy) and I gained some serious muscle. He worked out with me daily, pushed me at points when I thought I had given my all he insisted I had more, and he was right!

Learning that muscle weighed more than fat would be a difficult concept for me to embrace whether I knew it to be factually true or not. Somehow that was harder than the workouts. Thank God Joe was patient, I finally got it, I don't perseverate over the scale anymore!

I am super goal oriented, tenacious, LOVE a challenge, love to be pushed, don't like to have limits, independent, embrace the burn, the pain, you name it girl, and he gave it to me! I kept a food calendar on the island for the 84 days where I wrote down everything that I ate, I had the occasional cheat meal but I was so focused that it was very rare.

My self esteem began to resurface, my moods were so much better, I was positive, I felt like I had control over my life and myself again! The beautiful thing about that feeling is that nobody can take it from you; I think that although I see an outward transformation the biggest was on the inside.

The gym in essence is my therapy, I own a shirt that says shopping is my therapy … we can scratch that out now and put lifting weights! I'm excited to think that I am just getting started!

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