My Struggle....

 For as long as I can remember I have always been extremely self conscious about my weight and appearance. Starting when I went to BYU I quickly gained the "freshmen 15" and it kept going. Before I knew it I was at a weight I was horrified of seeing when I went on the scale. Once I got pregnant with Abby I figured "well now I have an excuse for being overweight" and never really thought much about it. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes which also meant that if I did not lose some weight that my chances of getting diabetes later in life were now 50 50. After Abby I decided I wanted to lose weight. I tried doing work out videos at home, talking her on long walks every day, watching what I ate...the norm to try to lose weight. Once I got onto a good routine of working out at home soon after I found out I was pregnant again. We were so excited but I was nervous about gaining weight again. I kept working out though because I was in a good routine and I know that it is good for the pregnancy. Then a week and a half later I lost that pregnancy. I was devastated and it through me for a loop. A few months later we found out that we were expecting again and I was terrified of losing that one too that I stopped working out, for fear of miscarrying again. My weight during the pregnancy went up but not too terrible. Once Chase came, the pregnancy weight came off within two weeks. But my pre pregnancy weight was not a weight I was ok with. So in November I decided to get a gym membership. I began working out at nights so that Phillip could be home with the kids. I would go about 3-4 times a week. Then I found that a friend in my ward was a major gym guru and went all the time. Once Chase was old enough, I switched to going in the mornings. We would go 5-6 times a week for 2 hours. We would do an hour class then work out for an hour on our own. I also starting counting calories with an app on my iphone and finally started to lose weight. I made small goals and I have one overall big goal. After 5 months of working out constantly, I finally lost 20 pounds. I hit a major plateau for almost 2 months and was getting extremely frustrated that I was working out so much, watching what I ate and wasn't losing a dang pound anymore. After much deliberation, research and talking to as many people as I could, I decided I was desperate enough to try the HCG diet. What did I have to lose besides weight right? At least hopefully. Anyway, we went down to California at the end of April and of course with going out to eat with our parents and such put back 4 stinking pounds. We got home on a Saturday and I started the HCG diet on Sunday. So today is my 23rd day on the diet, the last day of taking the HCG drops. I am finally happy to say, in 3 weeks I have lost 16 pounds, bringing my total weight lose this far to 32 pounds. I will admit it is very refreshing to have people notice that I am losing weight and I feel much better about myself. It is overwhelming to think that I still have 25 pounds that I would still ideally like to lose, but I am happy I have finally gotten this far. As I was searching through pictures to find my "biggest" picture to post, I noticed that over the years I have been so ashamed of how I looked that I really don't have many pictures of myself. I hope that from now I can be a bit more confident and be in more pictures. Haha. Now starting Friday I will be completely done with the very low calorie part of the diet and will start my 3 weeks of now starches, sugars or carbs. I can't tell you how excited I am to eat more food. haha and starting Friday I will begin my training for our half marathon in Park City in August. My hopes are that with this training and with my continuation of eating a very low carb diet that I will be able to lose more weight. I was going to wait till I had lost all the weight I wanted before I posted, but I guess I was just too excited about being done with this diet and I was also bored tonight that I decided to post. This was then........

Keep in mind this was taken only 5 weeks after Chase was born...haha

Then....embarrassing but a size 17....Now.....size 10-11