Future teacher wanting to lose weight

Hi Joanna,

I Understand where you are coming from completely.

Hi,

My name is Johanna an I have always been heavy. I've been playing soccer, taking dance lessons, played rugby and have been lifting weights (for competitions) but I am no longer active in any of these sports. I enjoy movement and sport but i constantly find myself struggling to find time.

Johanna, until I was 18 I was very active in competitive swimming. Two 90 minute works a day, plus dry land exercises and weights. After I quit because I had to pull up my marks in school, that was something I had to work hard at, my travel up the scale began. After failing out of my first year in University I took a forced year off and went back to swim it was the only discipline I knew in my life and at my last competition I may have weighed my ideal body weight - which is about 82.4 kg. By the time I started back after my dismal first year at University I was at 107.27 kg... With a lot of hard work-outs, back in the pool and dieting I managed to get down to just under 100 kg by my first competition. Then some more dieting but I could never get down to my ideal body weight and I hovered at about 94 kg - well until I returned to University and up my weight went again. Then I once again got serious on the exercise and as I prepared for a journey of a life time that I planned with a friend for nearly three years, to cycle from Vancouver, Canada to Halifax - I slowly dropped my weight again by the day my friend and I departed I was down same weight I was at the end of my first year of 107.27 kg. After 59 days on the road from Vancouver to Montreal - our home town, and didn't continue for a number of personal reasons, I was to about 89 kg... It over the years as I completed two other degrees, and then started working full time my weight kept on going up. I tried dieting, I gave up beer for stints.. and once I started working full time it seemed there was nothing I could do.

It didn't get any better when I lost my job in 1999 - about 600 people got laid off in one day where I worked. I took the package they gave me and moved to Ukraine to work on democracy development issues. That moved me back into my field eventually and then joined a business with someone I had known of for years. It was during this period somewhere in about 2007 that I realized that things were pretty bad and I had to change something in my life.. I went through a detox process and changed my eating habits. It helped a bit while I was still in Ukraine but once I came back to Canada my weight continued to rise... The pinnacle was just before I turned 50 and I decided it is time to change big time or I will never get to benefit from the business projects I was working on.

When I started my weight loss journey I weighed 85 kilos, and I am now carrying 72 kilos around. I would like to weigh between 55 - 60 Kilo because I'm not very tall (163 cm). Unfortunately, I seem to be stuck at 70-73. I weighed 67 at my lowest due to exam stress. I know it's wrong to starve oneself to lose weight, however, I struggle to eat enough which my body seems to think means that it has to put itself into starvation mode.... Ah!

Less than a week after my 50th birthday I left on an extended business trip to Germany. I changed my lifestyle completely. I started going to the gym regularly, but even more important I eliminated all processed foods from my food intake. The first day I went to the Gym during the last week in October I got on the scale I was up at 136.9 kg - I quickly did the math.. That put me over 300 lbs it scared the heck out of me..

For nearly two months I lived differently I returned to Canada a completely different person.. I didn''t get back into the gym for nearly five weeks but I had changed the most important thing that I had never realized before - my eating habits.

I've been back in the gym for just over a week now. I feel great and now I am on a mission as a friend of mine said. To help others, and share what I have learned. It took me a long time and it also took me a long time to realize that I had to take my life back.
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If anyone identifies themself in my weight loss journey or would like to exchange ideas, helpful advice or just feel like talking, you are welcome to add me or contact me
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Good for you for making that decision. It is a difficult one but the right one. Good on you girl!