Sunday, April 22, 2012

How (and why) I lost 25 pounds...


Last summer my husband broke his wrist in a training class – apparently the police dog liked his wrist a little too much.  Being a guy he figured he could wrap his wrist and it would heal.  About a month later the wrist started to swell again so he finally went to the doctor.  Sure enough it was broken and apparently he would have healed it himself had he had a larger brace on it (which he ended up getting rather than casting it) but while he was there the Dr called him out on his weight.  I had been telling him for MONTHS that he needed to lose some weight but his excuse was always “I don’t have the time to go work out as much as I would need to.”  He never listened to me that if he watched what he ate he would get great results but when the Doctor said that he needed to watch what he ate (since he was older and working out would not help much) he finally listened. 

At this point I felt a little bad that he was going to have to go on a diet and here I was still eating McDonalds and whatever else I wanted with no consequence (granted I was still nursing so I could afford some extra calories).  I made a deal with Mark that I would change my eating habits with him so he wouldn’t have to do it alone.  All fast food was a no-no, soda was gone, Mark gave up his sweet tea (which he substituted with splenda water – gross!), fish and chicken was readily stocked in the house as well as lots of veggies. 

We never did get a good “starting weight” on him cause he refused to step on the scale but I have a pretty good idea.  I still had a few pounds to lose from my pregnancy so my starting weight was 152 (pre-pregnancy was 148).  I set myself a goal weight of 140 and no less than 135 cause I never dreamed I would ever lose more than that and didn’t want to set myself up for failure. 

Weight started falling off of me quicker then Mark, which I credited to the nursing, but he lost 15 pounds in the first month.  When I hit 140 within the first month I was shocked, then I hit 135, then 130 and I was getting a little worried that I was losing too much weight.  At that point every morning I weighted light I ate McDonalds for lunch to counteract it.  Right now (7 months after the “change” started) I am weighing in consistently at 127 (although I at one point hit 124 and ate horrible to gain that weight back).  Mark ended up losing at least 30 pounds (since we don’t have a starting number we can only go off what his first weigh in was). 

My sister told me when I started to lose weight to keep in mind that I will look good no matter what, that when I get thinner I will still think I need to lose more so be careful.  For once my sister was right.  As the weight dropped my weight limit dropped lower and lower.  I began striving for a lower number each day.  Eventually I realized what was going on and reminded myself that I couldn’t lose more weight without being too thin.  Still today I look down and find “pudginess” especially around my waist and think I can lose a few more pounds to get rid of that but I know that I will actually have to exercise that off (something that I really don’t want to have to do). 

I’m not trying to brag or say “look at me”, rather show that changing your behavior really does work, anything is possible.  I figured I would really have to work to lose 5 or 10 pounds and ended up losing 25 in 4 months.  This is also coming from someone who knows nothing about weight loss or any training what so ever but I am very good at self control (except when it comes to what comes out of my mouth – but that is for a different day). 
AFTER

BEFORE
(disregard the horrible hair and sunglasses - this was the only picture I could find)


1 comment:

  1. That sister of yours is pretty smart sometimes. You look great <3.

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