I was never a chubby kid. I was active and participated in sports all through my childhood and into high school and college. Through my adolescence I started to get bigger hips and thighs than other girls my age. This bothered me and I didn’t understand enough about healthy eating to take care if it. I resorted to laxatives in an effort to rid the excess food from my system. I suffered with this eating disorder for many years. Never purging on a daily basis, but if I ever felt that I had consumed too much food, I would simply take an enormous amount of my laxative of choice, spend a few hours to several days in the bathroom and think that was the way to maintain a healthy weight. I was deluding myself. It wasn’t until I was pregnant with my first child, my daughter that this terrible habit was broken. Though only mildly overweight when I got pregnant, I had troubles almost immediately. I began suffering with high blood pressure and eventually preeclampsia led to toxemia and pre-term labor. I remember many nights laying in a hospital bed, praying for the contractions to stop as it was too soon for my baby to be born. Eventually, our daughter did arrive prematurely. Though healthy today, I was terrified she would suffer for her entire life for my poor health decisions.

This photo was taken while on vacation in February of 1999. I had just found out I was pregnant with my second child. I was still carrying the weight I had put on during my first pregnancy. We were visiting family in Florida, so I packed spring and summer clothes that had fit me the year before. I was horrified to find out while in Florida that nothing fit! I had to go shopping and buy new clothes just to wear while on vacation. I was forced to shop in plus size clothing shops and wear mens clothes to find items to wear that were big enough. I had never been this heavy in my life and while pregnant I had complications due to the excess weight, was put on steroids and restricted to bed-rest and gained even more weight.

The trend of excess weight, lack of exercise and poor physical health continued for several more years. I was medicated for high blood pressure, was on medication for fibromyalgia, was even told that I needed a hysterectomy due to extreme endometriosis. I still recall quite vividly a day in my family doctors office. I sat there in tears as he wrote out yet another prescription (I was already taking 5 maintenance drugs daily). Through my tears I think the turning point was this photo taken by my daughter on our vacation in ‘03. I had lost some weight, not much, but thought that I looked much better than I did.

With the encouragement of my husband (himself, a Certified Personal Trainer) I decided to begin to workout smart. I combined aerobics with weight training, ate healthful meals which meant that something raw was consumed at each and every meal, and ate small meals frequently so that I didn’t binge when hungry.

I took no weight loss drugs (though at another visit to see a doctor for an ear infection he tried to give me a prescription for a "fat loss" drug), I followed no "fad diet", and I had no surgery, yet I lost over 100 pounds. I am still losing weight today and will continue to until I have reached my goal, "total health".