Sunday, March 2, 2014

Trying this blog thing!

Quick intro of me, Stephanie!

I am a 35 year old, stay at home mom of 3 beautiful children! In the past 2 years, I decided to lose weight and get in shape. In February 2012, weighed 221 pounds and was not healthy or happy. Here is what I looked like at Christmas 2011.
That week I started walking for an hour a day, just to try to do something about my weight. A few weeks later I started using the elliptical for 4-5 days week for 20-30 minutes at at time. I didn't change my diet during that time, so I really didn't lose much weight. In February I went to the doctor for a minor foot injury and saw my weight on the scale for the first time in a long time. That day I downloaded the My Fitness Pal app to my tablet and started tracking my food. In the first week, without working out since I was injured, I lost 3 pounds. I knew at that point I could do this! 

I continued on the elliptical, slowly increasing my time and was still counting calories. In May 2012 the weather finally warmed up and took to walking outside again. By this time I was down almost 40 pounds!! Here's what I looked like after a 40 pound loss.

A big difference, but I still wasn't done! The next month, my wonderful husband and a couple of friends and I signed up for Mud Factor. An obstacle, mud 5K. I was the most out of shape and nonathletic of the group. I decided that I wanted to run between the obstacles, not just walk. So I looked up the Couch to 5K program and used Runkeeper to track my running. My first mile took me over 15 minutes to complete on June 27, 2012- but I did it! I worked all summer to get ready for the race. I am proud to say, that I ran 95% of the time between the obstacles. I decided that day that I didn't like the obstacles but loved running. So I signed up for a local 5K just to see how I would do.

So, just a few weeks later I was running my first 5K- I finished in 29:50! And I ran 90% of the race. It was hard, but I did it and my family was there cheering me on! By this time I was down over 70 pounds! Here I am just after finishing the race!

 A HUGE difference, but I still wasn't done! I decided that I wanted to do 1 race a month for the rest of that year. I did The Color Run in October with a time of 26:59. I ran a local Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning with a time of 25:10. I finished out the year with Ringing in Hope on New Year's Eve with a time of 24:37! I was feeling great and loving running.

For 2013 I set a goal of running 13 races for the year. My first race was in mid-February and I did that one in 24:26 and my weight was down to just around 120 pounds! I hit my weight loss goal in just a year. Here is me at my goal weight.

What a HUGE difference from where I started! I knew that if I wanted to maintain the weight loss I needed to stay active. I've continued to run and have gotten really great times (that will be in another post!)



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