Welcome 2017!

2017. Wow. How did we get here?

I can't believe I started this blog almost 5 years ago! I obviously hoped that after 5 years I would be at my "goal" weight and having to change the title of the blog. But, alas....

It has been a crazy 5 years and I feel like things are finally settling down. I have found a medication that has now been working for well over a year (**fingers crossed**). I continue my relentless battle with weight loss, but have gotten back on the fitness bandwagon.

Longest run since 2012!

In 2016 I got to a weight I hadn't seen since I started this blog. Unfortunately I welcomed 2017 having gained some of that weight back. BUT, I weighed less on 1/1/17 than I did on 1/1/16 and I am still down just over 20lbs from my highest weight. I'm obviously not happy that I let myself gain back so much of the weight I lost this year; but there's nothing I can do about it now so it's best to just MOVE ON.

I have found some new motivation in getting back into running and it makes me very excited. I found a new running partner and she is helping to get me back to running in a regular basis. She wants to complete a full marathon at least once in her life and I would love to do another one. We are helping to keep each other accountable to meet our goals. I've already told her that I can't do another full at my current weight and I frankly need to lose at least 30 pounds before that full marathon can happen. But, I know I can do this.


I am so hard on myself all the time and am my own worst enemy. I think when I got to my lowest weight in 2016 and realized I hadn't been there since 2012 I was a little disgusted by that. It made me realize how overweight I have let myself stay for the last several years. But this negativity doesn't motivate me. It ends up doing the opposite and I think subconsciously I somehow tell myself I can't do it anyway so I just stop trying.

When I feel like what I'm doing isn't good enough I try to find ways to show myself that they actually ARE good enough. Pictures are a great way to do this. In June 2015 we went to Disney and I was pretty close to my absolute highest weight. I had JUST started on this new medication and hadn't been off of steroids for all that long. I still had all the steroid puffiness; not to mention the weight gain from the emotional aspect of being sick. I basically hate looking at the pics from that trip; which is a shame because we get so many cute family pictures during these trips.

Well, over the summer we ended up booking our next Disney trip for December 2016. I started nutrisystem in June and was hopeful it would help me be around 200 lbs for this next trip to Disney. Yea. That didn't happen, so automatically I want to be hard on myself and basically tell myself what a failure I am. But this is exactly what I am trying to STOP doing. When I looked at the pictures from this trip I was actually mostly happy with them. Sure, I don't weigh 200lbs and I'm still very overweight; but I can look at them and see the improvement over the last 1.5 years. I decided to make a side by side pic comparison. I purposely brought and wore the same tank top as last year. The difference is amazing to me.

I don't have to tell you which picture is from which trip. To me the shirt even looks different. I can see differences from my head to my toes. I can't believe this is "only" about a 20 pound difference. I don't know when we're going to Disney again; but I do hope that I can add another picture to this comparison and see even more differences. Sure it would be great to be at my "goal weight", but it would still be cool to just continue to see differences.

So here's to 2017 and another year of my continued journey to "just fit".