100 Pounds Lost (with Before & After pic)!

I realized today that I've never shared my story on here so I'm going to take a leap and do just that!

I grew up overweight. I weighed 180lbs when I was 13 years old which was also the same year I downed a box of diet pills and woke up depressed that they never worked. 13 years old!

I spent the majority of my childhood being teased for my weight and I allowed myself to play victim of that until I was well into my 20's and ate my way to 250 pounds.

At the end of 2006, heavier than I've ever been living in a bachelor basement apartment, barely able to make ends meet and miserable at my "unlucky life" I had the "ah-ha" moment that changed my life forever.

I took at good look at the people in my family. I come from a LARGE family (literally AND figuratively) and almost all of them are obese. Not just overweight but OBESE like I was (but of COURSE I wouldn't admit that, "overweight" was a nicer term). I finally took a good look at them and all of their various weight and health-related illnesses and it dawned on me: if I didn't do something about my health I would either wind up like them, plagued by preventable illness or disease or I'd be dead by 40. I spent so much of my life blaming everyone else on my weight, lack of direction, lack of friends, lack of living LIFE that I didn't have the patience to understand what self-responsibility was all about!

When it finally hit me that I could be dead of heart disease by 40 I knew something had to change. So I told myself, seriously this time, that if I was going to do it, it would be on my OWN terms. I wasn't going to diet anymore. I was going to figure out how to CHANGE MY LIFE to live a healthier one.

Almost 9 years later, through learning how to eat healthy, taking up running and completing Turbo Fire and ChaLEAN Extreme I lost 100 pounds!

But it's not the weight that was the biggest change - my WHOLE LIFE CHANGED when I took my own health into my own hands. I started doing things I never thought possible. I ran a 5k, 8k, 10k, half marathon, 30k! I climbed the CN Tower STAIRS, completed the Insanity workout program!!! My confidence SOARED as I dared to make goals that stretched my self-perceived limits.

When I got pregnant in 2013 I shocked myself at still being able to do a perfectly 90 degree roundhouse kick one week before I gave birth.

The funny thing is? I'm not at my goal. I don't even know what that is yet but I'm still working on it and I know I'll get there because I've discovered over the last several years that I can do ANYTHING if I put my mind to it.

I now know that my purpose is to help other people who were in a similar position to where I was discover the fullness of their lives by taking control of their health.

Feel free to friend me if you've committed to taking control of your life and are ready to do whatever it takes to reaching your goal! I love being motivated by you!!!