It seems fitting to separate the “healthy” part of my recap, since so much of my blog focused on that aspect of my life. I think a great way to summarize my health journey is to show my weight chart for the last 13 years, since I first began blogging about my weight. (Click the image to see a larger version.)
So the short answer is, yes, I am still working to stay healthy, and to be honest, I will probably always be working on it. (I mean, I hope I still have the motivation to keep doing it!) I’m still running regularly, working out (which I hate 😝), and watching what I eat.
When I started my healthy living habits back in November 2011, I had just turned 40 the month before, and I weighed 150.3 pounds.
My goal was to get to 125. I started walking every day, and that walking regimen eventually helped me get to 125. Then, when I started running, I even went lower than that. My lowest weight during this entire journey was 113 pounds, in February 2013.
I was damn skinny, but good grief, I had awful hair! 🤣
The reality is, that was a bit too low. Not that I was unhealthy, it just wasn’t sustainable. I had gone from no exercise at all to running a minimum of 4 days per week, then to training for a half marathon, and I think my body was in shock, so much so that the weight just melted off. My body eventually got used to the exercise, and my weight crept up. But by that time, I was training for my first marathon (April 2014), and I got back down into the 115-120 range.
OMG, how cute were my kids were ten years ago?!
I ran another marathon the following year, and while my body was definitely getting used to the high mileage I was running, it still helped me keep my weight in the 120 to 125 range, so still under my original goal. Eventually, life and age started to catch up with me, and although I was still running, I stepped back down to half marathons, and without all the double-digit training runs, my weight crept up again, holding between 125-130.
(I had my hair professionally styled for that photo shoot, which is the only reason it doesn’t look like crap.)
I ran one last marathon in October 2018, and for a hot minute I got below 125 again, but after that, my life got really busy with the kids and their sports, and the bottom kind of fell out. I blew past 125 and then 130, and for most of 2019, I was between 130 and 135.
And then…the pandemic hit, and the world went crazy, and I went into a pretty deep depression. (Not like a clinically-diagnosed thing…I suppose more like just a really down period, which for me is very uncommon. I’m usually very “Susie Sunshine” about life in general.) My weight definitely took a hit, and I topped out about 140.
That was me, dressing up for a Zoom-based Easter service. I distinctly remember barely squeezing into that dress. I am smiling, but I was so very sad that day. I remember that after the service finished, I changed into sweats and then drove to the local Metropark, where I walked by myself for an hour and cried for most of it.
I started to come out of my funk in the fall, when we were able to go out and do more things, and my weight reflected my more positive attitude. Somehow I managed to get down to 125 by Christmas! But then in the early part of 2021, when the cases spiked again, my weight loss efforts took a backseat. I got back above 130, and I stayed between 130-135 for most of 2021. But then I became motivated by the fact that I was turning 50, and I set my goal to get below 130, which I was able to do just in time for my 50th birthday girls’ weekend celebration in Traverse City.
I was at 129.4 in this photo, and even though I was about 17 pounds above my lowest weight, and a solid 5 pounds above my original goal weight, I was happy with how I looked in this photo, and more importantly, I FELT good. So, I set my new goal weight to be 130. It has been a struggle over the last three years, with so much going on in my life. I really went off the deep end last fall, and for the first time in many years, I actually saw a number above 140 on the scale. The day after Christmas, I hit 141.8, which was a real wake up call. (I mean, it WAS the day after Christmas, but still… 😮)
In January I started training for another half marathon. It had worked for me in getting ready to go to Europe, and it pretty much worked again this time, when I got down to 130.4 right before we left.
Yes, I had professional head shots done while in Punta Cana, because it was cheap and why not? Although, that’s probably not the best representation of my weight, since it was taken on the last day of an all-inclusive trip. I definitely got my money’s worth out of the free dining, lol.
Things have been up and down since then, but I’m still sticking to the plan. My weight this past week was 131.4.
I don’t have any photos of me from the last few weeks (shocking!!), but here’s a photo from the graduation party toward the end of July.
I’m not unhappy with my current weight. It’s only a pound and a half from my goal weight, and if I can get to 130 by Labor Day, I’ll consider that a success. Will I get there? I don’t know, but I will try! Honestly, as I wrap up this blog, I feel a little bit amazed that after 13 years, I’m still running five days a week, throwing in an occasional half-marathon or 5k race, and still being mindful about what I eat on a regular basis. It has never been easy, and I know that it never will be, but I find that I like the way I feel when I’m closer to my goal weight, and that keeps me motivated to (as my boys say), “thug it out.”
This blog started in 2011 as a way to showcase my sports (hockey) photography, and then evolved into a healthy living/weight loss journey, and then eventually it just became an online diary. I’ve had my ups and downs in the last 13 years, but there were definitely more ups than downs, and I’m grateful to anyone who read even one post to learn more about me. Thank you for giving me a reason to write this journal, which details both the important and the mundane in my life, which I am so grateful that I documented. I will save it and probably print it out at some point, to put it away like a time capsule. I can only hope that someday, some future historian–maybe one of my descendants or possibly a complete stranger–will stumble upon it and marvel at this first-hand look at what life in the early 21st century was like for one random, unremarkable Michigan mom.
One last time–thank you for reading! ❤
(Final note: my blog will stay up until around September 20, when I will officially cancel my old hosting service, and then I expect it to be deleted by them sometime soon after.)