Becoming a crazy cat lady, one day at a time.: My Weight Loss Journey

I read a friend's blog today and could 100% relate to what she was saying. Her post inspired my post. You may or may not know about my struggle with weight. I thought I'd take time to tell everyone a little bit about my weight loss journey.

The summer before college most people will warn an incoming freshman of the dreaded "Freshman 15" -- the fifteen pounds that many people gain their first year in school.

Apparently I took the "Freshman 15" as a challenge and decided to gain the "Freshman 30". With all the late-night ~~eating of an entire pizza by myself~~ snacking, food available whenever you wanted, and the stress from a big life adjustment, I guess my weight decided to go with the flow. It also didn't help to go from being an incredibly active, athletic, on-the-go high school student to a sleeping, lazy, academically focused college freshman.

Here are a couple of pictures of Jeff and I towards the end of our time at BGSU:

(please ingore my terrible sunburn!)

At my heaviest I weighed 159.6 lbs and on my 5'2" frame, that's a lot of weight.

In May 2007, Jeff proposed and I vowed to get my weight under control before walking down the aisle. I got serious about it in January 2008 and joined Weight Watchers (WW). I wanted to lose 30 lbs before I got married that November. My goal weight for my wedding day was to be 128 lbs.

Losing weight is NEVER easy! Jeff and I both made a committment to do WW (Jeff did it at home while I went to the meetings, paid the big bucks, weighed in, etc). Over the next 9 months I lost 30 lbs. Not only did I manage to keep off the weight until my wedding day but I've managed to keep 25 lbs of it off for over 1.5 years.

I learned many things along the way.

Learn to love water! I gave up all regular soda and juice. Water is my main drink now and I have diet soda about 3x a week.
Don't deprive yourself of things you REALLY want. This can be a complete trainwreck. If deprive yourself of things you'll go crazy when you do get them and eat out of control. I ate something chocolate EVERY DAY and still lost 30 lbs. Did I eat an entire Snickers Bar every day? No. But I found ways to incorporate it in my diet and it worked.
You will have failures. You won't always be perfect. There were plenty of weeks when I either gained weight, maintained weight, or didn't lose as much as I thought I should. In fact, my first week on WW I only lost 0.8 lbs (when most people lose 3+lbs). You can't get discouraged. You have to accept the facts and move on. Every meal is a chance to make the right decisions and start new.
You have to change your food staples. 2% milk became skim milk; white rice became brown rice; margerine became spray butter; full fat salad dressing became light/fat free/spritzers; Dairy Queen twice a week became a Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwich if I had enough points left. And this is how our life remains today.
Exercise became a regular part of my routine. While on WW, I was exercising about 4-5x a week. This included cardio and weight lifting. I've backed off a bit on the intensity of my workouts but I still try to get to the gym about 3x a week.

Today, Jeff and I are both healthier and happier. We have more energy. We enjoy cooking at home. We're working on trying not to "love each other" with food. I label this as a "journey" because it's never really over. It takes complete dedication to make this kind of lifestyle change. Am I still hitting bumps in the road? You bet, but I'm doing my best to keep my "journey" a successful one.