by EM2WL | Jun 11, 2012 | Testimonials, The Journey, Transformations
*I must warn you first that this could be a long read, but a good read I must say* So today is finally here, my one year anniversary and boy the changes that have taken place are just so amazing. Every time I look back at my pictures from when I first started, I have to ask myself was that really me? Sometimes we don’t realize how we look until changes happen, and I’m so glad that I’m on this journey because I not only look better, but I feel better, my confidence is so much higher, I’m so energized, and overall just so much healthier. Exactly one year ago, I started watching youtube videos of others who have lost weight, and this one particular person mentioned Myfitnesspal, so I signed up and started tracking my calories. Shocker, Shocker, Shocker!!! When I tell you that I was so outdone when I seen how many calories, fat, carbs, and sodium was in the stuff that I use to eat, it was just ridiculous. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t actually stop eating what I eat, but I did cut back a lot on portion sizes and stayed away from too much fast food. I was 198 when I started and chose the 2 pounds per week option so of course MFP put me on the 1200 calories. I started searching for exercise videos and found a couple of ten minute videos and worked my way up to doing Billy Blanks Tae bo cardio. I lost weight at a great pace and was weighing myself everyday and the numbers continued to go down, down and down. Since I was heavy and very short, 5’2, this worked because I was considered obese for my height and age.
Okay, so eating the 1200 calories lasted for a good bit and I never hit a plateau, but I was aware of plateaus and was looking forward to one after reading that others hit one. In about 3 months, I lost about 33 pounds.
So, I continued on with the 1200 calories and Billy Blanks, protein was very low around the 40s or sometimes even lower, fats were also low, and just like most people starting out, I was afraid of the fats because I thought that it would make me fat, and I didn’t know any better about the protein because I didn’t do enough research and just relied on MFP. Also I was netting very low calories because I was only eating 1200 calories and at the time I didn’t have a HRM, but I knew that I was burning lots of calories because I was heavy and was very unfit. So another 3 months later, I had lost another 23 pounds and was weighing 142 in this picture. Whoa, what a difference from the 198. I just looked slim and no muscle definition, some flab, just skinny.
“142 lbs..no muscle..some flab, just skinny”
Around August, I started doing Chalean Johnsons’ Turbo Jam, and I loved it. I think it was around this time, I started doing some research about muscle definition and leaning out your body, though still on the 1200 calories. I also, started paying attention to the types of foods I was eating. My food choices have changed time and time again, so most of everything I started out eating, I don’t eat anymore because I really don’t want to. So around October, I started Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. Just to throw this out here, I’m the type of person that loves a challenge and this was definitely a challenge, because I read others talking about how hard it was. Then, it was hard, but now it’s probably a piece of cake because I’m more fit now and have done more hardcore things. After I was done with her 30 Day Shred, I started Ripped in 30 and did 2 rounds of it. I started doing more research, and discovered Chalean Extreme because I wanted to start weight lifting to shape my body and lean out more and to also get more muscle definition. I also started eating more around November, but I was still not eating enough for the amount of calories I was burning, and although I upped my protein, it still wasn’t enough. So after more and more research and after staring Chalean Extreme on New Year’s Eve, I started netting 1200 instead of eating that amount.
Here, I was down about 70 pounds. So after more research, I learned that I really should be netting my BMR and starting eating around 1600-2000 calories depending on the workout and estimation of calories burned. We have to fuel our bodies, and I had to learn that food is not an enemy. Around February, I was weighing 126.4, with a better looking body than before I started lifting weights.
My goal weight that I had in mind was 125, and since I’m very close to that goal, my weight has fluctuated from 126-128 range and it doesn’t bother me because I’m basically at goal anyway. I now wear a size 7/8 in jeans and probably a 6 and a size 4 in dress pants. I can wear small tops and all of this is just amazing to me because I feel so much better. When I first started this journey, I didn’t have a lot of support but all I needed was my very own support and continuous prayer to God each and every day and it has brought me this far. I don’t see not having support as an excuse because if you want it bad enough, then you will and can do it. I haven’t eaten at a restaurant since last summer, and it’s not because I’m scared of the food, I just don’t want it. Some people feel like you can’t enjoy life unless you’re eating junk food and restaurant food, and that is simply not the case. I enjoy my life just fine without it and I love preparing my food everywhere I go. I can still hang with my family and friends and enjoy them without eating what they’re eating. I’ve attended a birthday party and took my own cooked food, I’ve even gone to a restaurant with them, and guess what, I took my own cooked food and ate with them (by the way one of the workers thought that was so unique and cool, and he even added that he liked that). I said that to say that life is not about FOOD.
Yes you need food to live, and like the saying goes you only get one life, so why not live it right, well you only get one body, so why not treat it right? I can look back at my pictures and laugh and smile because that’s not my body, my attitude, or my personality anymore. People will change once they get healthier and lose weight and you’re suppose to because you’re no longer that old you anymore. I’m not saying get all cocky, but you will have more confidence and your self esteem is greater and it should be. Some people get mad or jealous of others when they say that you feel and look so much better and boy you know everybody doesn’t root for you, I’d be willing to bet that some people are rooting for us to gain our weight back, but that sure won’t happen because I’ve learned how to eat right and eat foods that I can eat for the rest of my life. Had I starved myself throughout this entire process, I would probably gain it back, but that’s not the case. I enjoy what I eat and I love, love, love that I can eat all day and still not gain weight, but rather lose fat and have a lean body and a fast metabolism.
It doesn’t stop here. I’m doing the Lean for Life phase, and I’m going to start Turbo Fire soon. I hope you all enjoyed this story and I hope that it can inspire and motivate others as well. Oh, I almost forgot, I am now at a loss of 72 pounds and if I lose, I lose, if not that’s fine with me because the scale is no longer my worry, but the changes in the mirror are. I also find it amazing that I have the V-shape underneath the fat that I’m trying to diminish which is what most men and some girls have, and that wasn’t a goal, buy hey I’ll take it. There is still more work to be done to make it more defined and there is still more fat to be burned. I need to go get my body fat percentage calculated because I have no clue what it is.
Have an EM2WL transformation to share? We’d love to see it! Be featured on our Transformations page by submitting your story to Success@EM2WL.com
by | Jun 5, 2012 | Testimonials, The Journey, Transformations
My name is Becca. I am a 32 year old, happily married, very busy momma to 5 beautiful children who range in age from 11 years down to 3. I think I have battled my weight my whole life. Growing up, my parents were very conscious of their weight, but seemed to go from one diet to another with only short-term successes. I was a pretty quiet kid, who liked to read, write, watch movies, bake cookies, do crafts, and hang out with my friends. I wasn’t real big on sports or really, anything active. I also loved to spend time with my Gramma, and we loved to sit around for hours in her kitchen playing cards and making cookies and apple pie.
I always had a bigger frame than the girls my age, with stocky, muscular legs, and carried most of my weight in my belly (not much has changed). As a teenager, this made me feel really insecure when I as I hung out with my friends who were all so naturally tall and thin. Eventually a friend of mine joined me on trying to lose weight. I think I was about 14 years old. Looking back, it makes me so sad. We told ourselves it was all about health, but really it wasn’t anything close to healthy. I dropped from a healthy, muscular 130 pounds to a sickly 97 pounds in a matter of months. I remember counting calories and trying to eat 800, then 500, then 300 calories a day. I had a lot of tricks up my sleeve to try to distract people from worrying about my weight. Meanwhile, I was getting sicker by the day. Not only did I look “scary skinny”, I was losing hair, freezing cold, I had heart issues, and I was very weak. My parents were scared to death and they tried everything.
Forcing me to eat. Taking me to eating disorder clinics, psychiatrists, and counselors. Pleading with me. Anger. Ignoring it. Punishing me. Nothing worked. I didn’t care about anything but getting thinner. I got down to 88 pounds at one point, and it wasn’t enough.
I told myself at one point, “I WILL NEVER WEIGH MORE THAN 100 POUNDS OR I WILL KILL MYSELF.”
Well. I finally reached a low point one summer day when I had binged. By this point, I had now ventured into the waters of bulimia from time to time as well and had actually gained a little weight. Everyone was so happy with the weight gain, but no one really knew that my struggle was actually growing more intense. To this day, I’m not sure what I was thinking, but either in an effort to commit suicide or to get rid of some of the excess calories, I took every pill I could find in the house. I threw up for days and I thought I was going to die. I finally I decided I’d had enough.
So, without any real support system except for my family and friends (many of whom at this time were also dealing with their own eating disorders), I set out to change. The counselors I had worked with did nothing but irritate me, and I decided I needed to do this for me. So I set out to change my life. It never occurred to me to make healthy choices as I set about to reestablish normal eating, I just ate and I exercised. At first, the food was really scary, and I still had a lot of binge/purge relapses. But eventually, it got easier.
I went away to college and really struggled with my eating. I gained a lot of weight. I think I went from 88 pounds to 170 in a matter of a couple years. I just kept gaining, and I tried to tell myself I didn’t care, but I did. A LOT. And I just ate more to try to numb some of that pain and shame I felt. In the process, I got heavier and heavier.
Then I met my husband, and for a while, I kind of forgot about all my eating issues. I was totally in love, and nothing else really seemed to matter. I didn’t lose any weight or gain any weight, but I was far from being healthy.
A few months later, we decided to get married, and a few months after that had our first child, an adorable baby girl. The moment I held that little pink bundle, I was forever changed. I was determined to set a different example for my precious children.
I can still remember every detail about my last binge/purge cycle when that sweet little one and a half year old toddled into the bathroom and tugged on my leg,
“What’s matter, mommy?”
Needless to say, it never happened again.
So I kind of stopped worrying about my weight, and ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I poured my life into becoming a mother and homemaker. We started homeschooling, and we discovered that we had NO fertility problems whatsoever. I was going through a lot of lifestyle changes, physically and spiritually. I told myself I was done with the dieting thing, but in all honesty, I was just developing another eating disorder in the form of emotional binge eating.
I started putting everyone else first, and I always came last. I felt selfish when I thought about taking care of my body.
That, combined with five children in 10 years, did a real number on my body. I would lose 20-30 pounds doing some crazy diet, and then gain it all back and then some.
Fast forward to August 2010. We suffered a huge tragedy in our family involving one of our children. I was in such a deep depression, and I just ate to try to numb the pain. I ended up gaining about 40 pounds in just a few short months. That meant I tipped the scales at 275 pounds.
Eventually, I just had enough. I realized what a low point I was at in my life, and I knew it needed to change. I started doing all kinds of research. One day, a friend handed me a book on clean eating and I read it cover to cover in one night. A few months later, I found another book at Barnes and Noble and read that one too. Finally I was sold. If I was going to survive, I was going to need a major turnaround. I picked up a book on clean eating, and I realized that’s what I needed.
I spent a couple months planning and preparing. I wasn’t ready, emotionally or physically to really commit to anything. I knew this had to be real and lasting. In my mind, I was going to fight for my life. I was either going to die trying or I was going to have gastric bypass. I felt like this was my last chance. There was a huge sense of urgency that was no longer about going on and off diets. This was how it was going to be for the rest of my life.
SO, on January 2, 2011, I threw out all the processed food in the house. I went grocery shopping and only kept “clean” foods in the house. I joined a gym and started exercising when my girls went to swim team. It was really half-hearted at first, but I was doing SOMETHING. A few weeks later, I started a detox, joined My Fitness Pal, and started going to a boot camp class. It was so challenging. The workouts alone just about killed me. I literally puked a few times. I was so very heavy and out of shape, but it just wasn’t an option. I HAD to do this.
For about the first six months, I ate a really low calorie (like 1000 calories a day) diet and did about 2 hours of cardio. It worked out really well for a while. The weight was falling off me and I was so happy. I felt like I was finally doing something. Then I hit the dreaded plateau and it lasted for 6 months. No matter how little I ate or how much I exercised, nothing happened. My hair started falling out, my skin was flaking off, and I was constantly cold and dizzy. Eventually though, I started gaining weight on 1000 calories. And that’s when I think I finally had enough.
I really wanted to lift weights, but I was really intimidated by the grunting guys in the weight room at the gym. Somehow I stumbled across the book New Rules of Lifting for Women, and I was sold. I learned about the importance of eating to fuel your workouts, and it made sense.
I continued doing some research and eating back some of my exercise calories. Guess what? The scale started to move again!!! I was so excited. I didn’t have to starve myself? Score!!!! But what was even better than the fact that the scale was moving again was the fact that I dropped sizes so fast I had to start buying clothes at Goodwill!
This was a real struggle for me to eat more, because I was so afraid I was going to gain back everything I had lost, but I knew I needed to do this healthfully or the vicious cycle was about to continue. There was a lot of back and forth stuff going on, but finally I committed to it. 
I was able to break the 6 month plateau and lose the next 50 pounds, but more importantly, I lost inches. At my heaviest, I wore a size 22. Today I’m wearing a very comfortable pair of size 6’s…at 170ish pounds!
I’m totally sold on the eating more thing and Eat More 2 Weigh Less. It is one of the best things I’ve ever done for my life, my health, and even my family I think has been blessed by it. For the first time in my life, I feel freedom from the eating disorder chains that have bound me for so long! I have to thank God, because He has given me real victory over these struggles in my life. He is still working in my life, and I still struggle from time to time, but I try to keep it real because the fact is none of us has it all together. I couldn’t have done any of this without the support of my family, and especially my husband in coming along beside me and encouraging me so many times when I wanted to give up. And of course, the support system I have found on the Eat More 2 Weigh Less (EM2WL) boards has been truly amazing and life changing for me.
Thanks everyone!
Progress, not perfection!
Have an EM2WL transformation to share? We’d love to see it! Be featured on our Transformations page by submitting your story to Success@EM2WL.com
Becca is a busy wife and homeschooling mother to five children ages 5 to 13. About three years ago, she embarked on a journey to health and fitness that resulted in the loss of approximately 100 pounds. Today, she is a competitive powerlifter and strongwoman who loves ice cream and deadlifts. As an ISSA certified personal trainer, she is passionate about helping women to get started on a lifestyle of strength and fitness.
by EM2WL | May 30, 2012 | Testimonials, The Journey
The week before I started EM2WL – I was 294.7lbs
My name is Mike; I am a 31 year old CIO for a Silicon Valley startup company near San Jose, CA.
Over the course of the last 12 years I have slowly let the weight creep on at about the rate of 10lbs of fat per year. This weight gain is attributed to a “party” lifestyle. I was successful very early on in my career, which led to a habit of drinking all the time, eating a lot with friends, and what I will call general shenanigans.
For the last couple of years I have struggled with losing weight. I have tried everything from personal trainers, fad diets, VLCD diets, Paleo Diet, Atkins Diet ect. Some worked, some didn’t. I would always drop 10-20lbs very very quickly and think I was on the right track, but after a month or two it would completely stall and reverse direction. When doing low-carb diets I would generally gain the weight back + more.
I was so frustrated with not losing weight; I had the thought that maybe something was wrong with me. My family has a history of diabetes and high blood pressure. I honestly though at that time that was my golden ticket to losing weight, that I was going to go into the doctor’s office and they would tell me “Aha! This is why you are not losing weight”. I got checked for everything from high blood pressure, to thyroid issues, to low testosterone. This was in December 2011.
I got the results back and almost s*#@ a brick. I was pretty much healthy, aside from higher than normal blood pressure. I was devastated to say the least and lost as to why I could not lose weight.
Fast forward to March 2012, I hit a high point for my weight of 310lbs. I decided it was time to attempt to lose weight again. I was told about MyFitnessPal as a good way to track calories, meet with members and generally get support for weight loss. I signed up there and did pretty much what everyone else does. I set my activity level to Sedentary and set my weight loss goal at 2lbs per week. I think it put me at like 1400 calories a day to lose weight.
I started walking every day. I quickly lost 15lbs over the first month. I was pumped. However at the end of the first month, I started gaining weight back. My next step was to cut calories out, so I went down to 1200 calories a day. Once I did this the weight start coming back faster. I was literally about to go crazy. I was also gaining size around my midsection (via measurements). Not a good situation.
At the end of week 5 – only a 6lb difference
I posted about this one day on the MFP boards in early April. A very nice and very fit lady named Lucia responded to me about their group on MFP called Eat More 2 Lose Weight. She linked me to some articles. For the next 2 weeks I spend an absurd amount of time researching this, because my thought was “How the hell can I lose weight while eating more”
Anyways after a couple of weeks of researching I decided that it couldn’t hurt. I decided I would commit to it for a long while, as I heard this takes some time, and is a slower but more effective process. I was skeptical to say the least.
Week 1: I researched my TDEE numbers and set my calorie goals for the first week. My TDEE was 3984, and my TDEE cut target was 3156. I was so scared. I was literally upping my calories by 2000. At the end of week one I weight myself. I was 299.2lbs. I had gained 6.5lbs in ONE week. I thought, here is the proof this is a crock!
I posted this on MFP group, and everyone said it was normal and to give it time. They told me to throw out the scale and start measuring. I said “Ok, I’ll keep at it”
Week 2: After week 2, I weighed myself again (I know I wasn’t supposed to). I was 297.3lbs. I was like, ok that good, I am seeing a drop. My measurements were roughly the same.
Week 3: After week 3, I weighted in again, and this time I was at 292.3lbs, a 5 lb. difference from week 2, and my lowest weight in a long while. What I noticed here was I was starting to lose inches! My neck, arms, belly, waits, chest ect were all shrinking.
Week 4/5: The trend continued until week 5. I hit 288.4lbs. I was PUMPED! Eating like crazy (healthy foods). I had lost a total of 12” all over my body. Crazy talk!
Week 6/7: My weight lost plateaued over these weeks, and even went up by .8lbs. I went back to the group and found this to be normal as well. This is where I learned that the scale can lie. Even though my weight was slightly up for 2 weeks, I had lost another 3” overall. My body is still changing.
Reaching new heights after 7 weeks!
This is me at the top of a steep hike, something I haven’t been able to do before…same weight as Week 5 but slightly thinner”
This entire time I have been researching this whole subject and am fully sold on it, and now I spend free time on the forums trying to help people to realize they don’t have to starve to lose weight. There is so much joy that can be had in losing weight, but only if you are in it for the long haul.
I will keep updating my info, posting information that I learn and helping to motivate anyone who wants to change themselves for the rest of their lives.
See you all on the forums!
Mike
Have an EM2WL transformation to share? We’d love to see it! Be featured on our Transformations page by submitting your story to Success@EM2WL.com
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