My Journey with MFP

This is not a success story in my eyes, I will tell you why in a bit.

I have been here on MFP for 3 years; I started back in October of 2010. I am a mommy to two wonderful kids and I had them via C-section. I am a Latina woman and I know that I will never be super skinny because I have curves. The skinniest I have been was before I got married, my wedding dress was a size 6, and prior to that I think I wore like an 8 never really paid attention to that.

I started this journey after I saw a picture of myself at Disneyland, my son was not quite 1 year and I know that while pregnant with him I gained a lot of weight. I was already overweight when I got pregnant with him because I had not lost all of the weight I gained after having my daughter.

My starting weight was 162lbs and I am 5’3. I wanted to do something that was going to make the weight come off fast; I hated the way I looked and how I felt. At that time P90x was in my husband got the videos from a friend and I started doing the revised mode ( I have never been into heavy lifting) I did not know much about nutrition, I found MFP and just started tracking. I lost 12lbs with P90x, I was excited about the weight loss. I wanted to try something different, so I started doing Turbo Fire I loved Turbo Fire. I lost inches and 8lbs. I was in the 142 at this point, my goal weight was 130. I was really close.

Then I started to have problems in my marriage, all of the focus and energy I was putting in my workouts went into trying to save my marriage and work things out. I gained the 8lbs that I had lost with Turbo Fire back. That put me back at 150 lbs.
But while all of this was going on I never left MFP, I was not consistent with my logging but I wanted to stick with it because I had a goal I needed to reach. I kept pushing finding different workouts; I tried Turbo fire again but could not find my groove.

Than last year I felt in love with running again, I was a runner in high school but due to knee injuries I had stopped running. I started training for my first 5k, I ran that race in the summer heat of AZ and even though it was not easy I told myself no walking push through until the end. That sparked my love for running and I signed up for another 5k in 2012. This year I have raced in 3 10ks, and 1 15k. I am currently training for a half marathon that I will run in March of 2014.

The picture below: the left one is me at Disneyland in 2010 the one on the right is me this past weekend at my 15k race. There is only 12lb weight loss difference between these two pictures and 3 years of determination and not giving up.
Now I eat to fuel my runs, not so much for weight loss, I am hoping the weight starts to come off again and I can finally reach my goal of 130lbs.

But running has brought a new perspective I am not depriving myself of food just in the name of weight loss. I have to think about what I will eat and will help me run better or affect my runs. Trust me when I eat like crap even though it is within my calories my runs are affected.

I needed to write this for myself, to help me through this journey and not give up. I do get down on myself sometimes especially when I read the success stories about people reaching their goal in 1 year, or 6 months. But I am not giving up