Insecure to Influencer: My Story

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my post. I poured my heart and soul into this post. My hope is you takeaway some kick as motivation and if you know anyone who could use the same, please share it!

*This post is dedicated to my Dad. Thanks for pushing me, teaching me to keep reaching for more and asking more of me when I had no belief in myself. Love you Always.*

Ok guys, this one is a big one for me. Never have I ever…Shared this much all in one place about my personal weight loss story. I’ve talked about my personal story before, I even have talked about why I started blogging, but nothing ever this in depth. My Dad always encouraged me to share this part of my story with my readers. He too had been through the same journey, right about the same time as me in life. 30 years old, more than 100lbs to lose, two kids– he knew what kind of hill that is to climb. He knew how much grit it takes to achieve something so impossible. When he encouraged me over and over again, my first response was “Well, you and mom are the only ones who read my blog and you already know the story!”.. He would always laugh and carry on, but he knew this journey was something to be shared. He knew that my my going through all this, was meant for a bigger purpose. Here’s the real reason why I haven’t shared before- I have always just been so focused on shedding not just the weight, shedding the skin “literally and figuratively) of who I was. Leaving behind the mindset of low self esteem and NEVER believing in myself. Anyone new that I met, I really didn’t share that about myself, “Hi, I’m Sarah- I just lost 100lbs” doesn’t really roll off your tongue. As I became stronger, not just physically– mentally– I wanted to be seen just like that. I had long dreamed in my former heavier body to be seen as an athlete, someone who gives a damn about herself, someone who sets a goal and crushes it. I wanted to not be seen as a woman who let herself go, didn’t take care of herself, didn’t value herself enough to exercise and eat right.

I will say that the years leading up to my deciding to finally make the commitment to lose weight, I was as broken on the inside as I have ever been. I really couldn’t tell you any real specific reason, other than I just let a LOT of bad habits creep up into my life. Eating, drinking, smoking and not exercising I had packed on over 100lbs after high school. Combine that with being a new mother, my only coping skill was to eat so that’s what I did!

Needless to say, fitness and a healthy lifestyle in general have not always been apart of my life. Now that’s not to say my parents didn’t try to teach me through behavior, and I played sports in school, but I’m Type A, first born and strong willed…. and this girl DOES WHAT SHE WANTS. Don’t care what you say about how unhealthy it is, I’m doing it. You see I was strong, I just wasn’t using it in the best way possible.

Thinking About It.

I remember being pregnant and sitting in my Dad’s car saying, “I can’t breathe, as soon as this baby (Presley) comes out, I am losing weight!” Walking at the grocery store was a task I could hardly do. This was not just baby weight, this was happening prior to even getting pregnant. I was SO PISSED that I let this happen. I LITERALLY SNAPPED. So Presley was born and I started to research ways to lose weight. At this point I had only EVER lost 20lbs one time through a keto diet. Deep inside I really didn’t BELIEVE I had the willpower so I opted for a program that requires near starvation and no exercising. I ordered some processed bars, and ate those for a while, and surely I lost weight! 3 months later I was down about 25lbs and feeling pretty good! So I ordered Fish and Chips to celebrate! (uh, backwards!) Rested on my laurels for a good 8 months and enjoyed that little bit of success, but SPOILER ALERT- I gained it all back!

My Life Will Get Better When I Do

After the Fish and Chips incident of 2013, my self esteem was at an all time low, was TOTALLY not social, cried when I put clothes on and literally hated my life. I snapped.. again. I tried to wiggle out of it, but I really started to think that MAYBE I would need to actually start working out or getting a little active and eating better. I was in a Facebook group that had a recurring theme that I LOVED. MY LIFE WILL GET BETTER WHEN I DO. It stood for stop complaining and do something, take control of your own actions. I printed it out and taped it on my bathroom mirror. I LIVED by this statement, something in it just struck a cord. Stop blaming other people for your position Sarah. Nobody was going to do it for me, and NOBODY had the power to change this except me.

New Year, New Me! Here we go! New Years Resolutions! What I did NOT do was go all Gung Ho on diet and exercise. (New Year New Me, I have a commitment and no clue) But I had an idea of a simple concept. Calories in/Calories Out– I will lose weight if I burn more. So I downloaded the My Fitness Pal app and the Couch to 5k app. I heard that will help me start to work on running. It was SUPER simple, but it was a plan. You know what I did the morning of Jan 4, 2014? I woke up before everyone else, and walked/jogged a mile in my basement on that app on my phone. Not kidding, you know I wasn’t getting to the gym I had no clue how to do that! So I walked in circles with my headphones on for 1 mile. Day 1, LOGGED. ( Happy Dance) At my weight and physical ability that was enough to start! Did I have fancy workout gear? Nope. I wore my 1 pair of maternity capris and an old t-shirt. I didn’t have ANYTHING that remotely resembled workout clothing. I hardly fit into things at all, no new workout gear for this girl to get started. Later that day I started tracking my food on My Fitness Pal. How many chicken nuggets can I have on 1800 calories a day? Not kidding that was a real question. Well shit you can’t have very many before your numbers run out I’ll tell you that! Totally in the most unglamorous way did my journey begin.

A few days went by, I was feeling pretty good! Nope, didn’t lose any weight yet, but I stuck with my promise to myself and THAT- my friend, is worth its weight in gold. Once these little promises began to pile up day after day, I got a little more creative with working out. I even got up enough courage to go up to the gym at 5:30am and do 30 minutes on the elliptical! WINNING! Do you know the kind of people who show up to workout at that time? REALLY COMMITTED ONES AND I WAS ONE OF THEM! I stayed on the plan of calculating my intake and I made it a game to be über accurate with my calories on the app. It felt good to hit the goal and stay on track!

Ps. Did I have Mom Guilt? UM. HELL yes. It was HARD to take time for myself at first. I did feel objection from my family at first, they didn’t want me to leave to workout or go for a walk… But, I did. The more I did, the better I got at silencing that inner voice to tell me to sit back on the couch.

As the time went on I kept it interesting with my workouts, I eventually graduated to in home DVDs like Jillian Michaels and Shaun T’s T25 workouts. I also took up running and walking, I signed up for a 5k every single month of the year that year. I was determined to be able to run at least 3 miles. I HATED running, but got in the groove a bit more when results started to show. 5 Months into my journey, I did meet a friend on Instagram, who turned out to live right around the corner from me. She asked me to go to a workout class that was hip hop dancing…Now listen. I had NEVER been to a group fitness class in my life and had NO clue what that would be like. I was SO nervous in the car ride there, thankfully she agreed to drive me because I don’t think I would have made it there if she didn’t basically kidnap me!

Taking that opportunity really set the stage for the next level as far as confidence building. I began asking myself what if and began imagining what it would be like if I went to class on a regular basis. What if I could continue to go to those classes? What kind of results could I achieve? Better yet, what if I made new friends that had fitness in mind? I HAD NO IDEA what this was going to bring into my life, but I had just enough confidence in myself to find out. Please let me say that I am NOT a dancer…lol.. but I will tell you it FEELS GOOOOOD to dance for fitness to music that I LOVE and make friends! If you ever have the chance to go to a hip hop class I Highly suggest it! The friends I made there are STILL my friends and I enjoyed every KICKBUTT moment!

THINGS JUST KEEP GETTING BETTER

Then I met Orangetheory…The first OTF in Ohio opened up right down the street from where we live and I stopped in on day after church to see what the heck was going on in there. All Orange, shiny and new it took me about .1 second to sign up for a class the next day. After that workout I was hooked on that one too. I loved that one just as much enjoyed more weight loss benefits, making new friends and just the WHOLE THING SPOKE TO ME! I actually published a post with a couple of my favorite BossBabe trainers last summer! They gave me some recipes one cooking, it was so fun! You can find it here and here.

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I tell you these stepping stones not just to bore you with the details of every last place I have worked out in 4 years BUT to tell you that they each had their place. There was a reason why I didn’t start out at a gym, I likely would have been too intimidated and quit. There’s a reason OTF opened up in my neighborhood, all these things brought the fitness, the routine, the habits but also the people in my life that I needed to learn from to truly transform my life.

I combined all these exercises and low calorie intake for one year to achieve a 100+ pound weight loss. People who had not seen me for a couple years did not even recognize me and my kids loved all the extra activity that we did. Do you know what it feels like to go to the mall and ACTUALLY BUY CLOTHES after not being able to do so for YEARS?! Freaking liberating.  I had done something that NO ONE except my parents and husband thought I could do. What I didn’t expect with weight loss was the mindset change. After all that DAILY accountability and struggle– my mind was ROCK SOLID. I could do anything and I have never thought that about myself EVER. Dominating this one area, learning the skills I needed to manage day to day, building trust with myself, made every aspect of my life better. My life really did get better when I did. I have more of everything, energy, friends, direction, sense of self, general happiness and most of all PERSONAL RESPECT.  I fully understand the cause and effect of eating, and damaging self talk. I know how to handle stress and understand when I get overloaded. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. I still stress eat and am challenged personally everyday. But this journey taught me valuable lessons, that I can take to every other aspect of my life.

No journey is without struggle. After I lost the weight, my skin was a little floppy to say the least. My stomach sagged and I had NO boobs to speak of. Think pancake status. How could I have come so far and then STILL need to tuck my stomach into my pants?! (Graphic I know, but real life sister) Eventually talked myself into going to a consultation for a “Mommy Makeover”. If you aren’t familiar with that, its a combination procedure that involves breast augmentation and a tummy tuck. Everything went well there, I had skin to be removed, just as suspected .. and we could do some implants to plump you right back up. We figured it out, and I was scheduled for surgery 3 weeks later! You know me… when my mind is made up- I go for it! Surgery went well, the results I saw even swollen were better than I had prior to surgery! Recovery was a little different story. Bodies that lose a large amount of weight quickly REALLY don’t want to release any more—and my Dr. removed 2.5lbs of skin on my midsection so the healing process took a long time!

Recovery Expectation= 6-8 Weeks (Shit) REALITY= 6 months (Double Shit)

Raise your hand if you would stress eat the shit out of that situation?!.. Yea. me too. So by the time I was able to workout again… I had GAINED weight after recovery! Like 40lbs!

This taught me a valuable lesson, this journey is NEVERENDING. Even though I NEVER want to be there again, the WEIGHT can come back if I am not careful! I will always need to be looking for new ways to implement my healthy lifestyle, staying active, feeding my body what it needs to function and making the effort EVERYDAY. Also, that it’s ok to restart! Just don’t lose belief in yourself that you are in control.

Through it all, my journey has lead me right here. Right here to this blog, right over to my Instagram platform too. The fact is that if I didn’t go through all that, I would not have the confidence to try on clothes, have my picture taken as often as I do or be online and share my life the way I do today and everyday! Like that time I did a gift guide exclusively in leggings?! Talk about nerves! Lol! It gave me perspective, for example I often will get comments that will say they love that I share that I am a Size Large and that I have NO PROBLEM sizing up sometimes to an XL… (You know how we don’t like sizing up) But my personal perspective is that I have (Very teary eyed) purchased a size 22 jeans before… So that size XL? Whatever.

Know why? Because I am more than that size label. I don’t give a rip what size I am as long as my body feels good, is able to work at and be active in the things that I want to be! If you made it this far in this post, you need to know YOU are more than that size label too. But there is a chance you are reading this and shaking your head, and feeling EXACTLY how I felt at the beginning of my journey—What I will say to you is this: take control. You have the power to take control of your life! Grind Baby Grind. If I don’t know the answer, I Google. I research, I FIGURE IT OUT. If you would have told me 6 years ago that I would be sitting here writing this on a blog post, I would not believe it. No it wasn’t overnight. No I had no clue what the future had in store for me. But none of us do. My Mess gave me a voice, and it has given me back my life.

The MESS has become the Message. Surely I’m writing this in part to show you where I’ve been, and many of you have asked how I did it. Maybe a little of it is so that I can show you I have street cred in saying: “Sister I have been there too”. New baby, hate how your clothes fit, husband travels, needing motivation to workout, loss of a loved one… I’ve been through it all and I STILL am going through it. I also share because it always helps to know that you aren’t alone. BUT, I would be remiss in not telling you, don’t make it your excuse. Nobody can lace up your shoes or make a healthy choice for you, only you can. Nobody can do it for you! Don’t lie down and accept an unhappy or unhealthy state. We are stronger than that, we deserve better than that. Make a plan, small steps to the larger goal. Only look at today, don’t look 6 months from now, the journey will look too difficult. Day after day, you WILL see progress, and with persistence you will meet your goal. Don’t forget: My life will get better when I do.

Moments along the way…

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Thank you so much for reading this LARGE Piece of my heart. This is really where it all began for me. This is how I stopped the blame and started to do something about it. Believe it sister. My Life Will get Better When I Do.