Getting Stephanie's Skinny On

Weightloss has always been a struggle for me as long as I can remember. I have an overweight family that emotionally eats. Even at the thinnest I have ever been, I never realized how skinny I was.

In the last couple years I have met the man of my dreams, we got married this summer and everything in my life has been absolutely amazing. I left my first teaching job and moved to our new home expecting to get a job right away, but I didn't. The reason that I am at this moment is because I gained weight after our wedding and am ready to change my life forever. This is a small bit about where my journey began and how I got to where I am today with my weight loss.

In September Mallory, the now cofounder of our blog, and I found each other on Sparkpeople.com, which is a great website to help you get started. I had decided that I needed to make a change, but it came very slowly for me. I was very skeptical of this "Sparkbuddy" idea, but she seemed way nice and we had so much in common it was ridiculous. Eventually we decided to take our emailing friendship to the next level and started texting.

I was having a real problem with motivation and she just was kicking my butt, but it just didn't click for me completely until around November that I was really serious about weight loss. Then we started moving into the Jillian Michaels direction and starting to strength training along with our elliptical machines. We struggled through the holidays but once Christmas and New Years were over we have been on fire ever since. I began this journey at 230.2 and am currently at 218 lbs. Our goals are to take pictures monthly, keep track of daily calorie intake, drink water, eat more fruits and veggies.

The purpose of our blog is to be a tool for us to see our progress, look back in order to make good decisions ahead, and share recipes.

Gettin' My Skinny On

My weight gain/lose history is very simple. I've been steadily gaining weight all of my life as a fairly inactive person, and have never lost any weight. Until recently, that is. Pretty simple weight gaining story, huh? So in September of 2008 I joined spark people and have been using that as a tool to take control of my eating and exercising habits. Since September I have gone from 207.8 lbs (my all time high) to my current 190 lbs. Spark People is also where I met Stephanie. We have been great texting buddies and really try to help and motivate each other. We wanted to create this blog as a place where we can post new ideas, recipes, pictures, successes and failures. This journey isn't an easy one. Some days it feels like the failures outweigh the successes, but at the end of the day they all add up and that's the important part. We are in this for long haul and that's why we are going to get real results. One step at a time.