Meet the New & Improved...Me :)

I will begin by saying I too had ALWAYS been athletic growing up and played every sport in high school, which of course helped After graduation, I still did well at keeping the weight off.....for a while! Of course, I was going out, dating, etc so it was important to maintain a certain "look"...you all know what I'm talking about...lol THEN I got married...a couple years later, along comes baby #1, and gestational diabetes with the pregnancy...not too much weight gain but a few pounds, along with the "few" I had added the previous years after high school. Another baby, and a few more pounds came a couple years later. I'd like to say after both girls were born I started the "yo-yo" dieting...but truthfully, I never did "diet", sure maybe a few times throughout the years, but for the most part I was just very slowly, almost unnoticeably, packing on a few pounds every year! I DO NOT in any way "blame" having children (babies) on my weight gain...However, I "blame" the life of a parent with children...I became absorbed with their life, their needs, a hectic life style that often included fast food or convenient food (frozen, pre-packaged, etc) and somewhere along the way lost sight of myself, and my NEED to be a healthy mom FOR them! This realization hit home when I had to go for a physical to start a new job and FAILED! What?? I don't fail...I was super mom, surely they had me mistaken with someone else right? lol Nope, no mix-up in the blood test, it was in fact me! I was sent directly to an Internal Medicine Dr because my blood sugar was almost 400! About a hundred more and I could go into a diabetic coma...really? Well, that certainly explained a lot...dizzy spells, shaky, tiredness, blurred vision, I could go on :-( the Dr, that day, put me on THREE different meds...ugh...I HATE taking meds. I was started on oral insulin, a high blood pressure pill and a cholesterol pill. This was my eye opener...my time to ask myself, is this who I was or wanted to be? And decided that I wasn't this person that I had let myself become and resolved to "find" myself again! Sooo...I came home, and took the "before" pictures, weighed and measured myself...then thought, "now what"? I started researching some diabetic recipes (which are also typically lower in carbs) and had heard about the C25K so I went and bought an iPod that day to download the app and start So that's where I was...and that's where my journey began! My weight loss to date is 73 lbs in about 7-8 months, about 8-10 lbs a month, which is a healthy time frame BUT, I see the most drastic results in inches, IMHO! I was an XL shirt, now a Med...a size 16-18 jeans, now 4-6. I lost 7 inches in my chest, 12-13 inches in my waist, 7 inches in my hips and give or take 3-4 inches in my arms and thighs. My BMI was 38 and is now 26, which I would still like a bit lower. It is important, I think to measure yourself as well as weigh on a regular basis...especially if you are running because you will see more inches fall off than weight because you will simply be replacing the "pounds of fat" with "pounds of muscle" which is a good thing!! I feel so much better not only inside but about myself as well. So, there you go...me and my journey in a nutshell...haha, not really, I know it's long...I tend to go on and on!