The Journey to Live Thin Live Well…
Life is about growing and stretching your boundaries. This site will eventually grow and stretch with a focus on all aspects of the LiveThinLiveWell life – physical, mental, spiritual, & financial. Hopefully as it develops you will find that this site is your one-stop tool to find the answers that you need to LiveThinLiveWell.
My Journey to Live Thin Live Well…
As a child we did not have soft drinks or candy in the house. For on thing we did not have money for much other than the necessities; for another thing my Mom was and is a health nut. I mean that with the greatest amount of love and affection. Along with being a nut she is also my encourager and my role model for striving for the best health and wellness possible.
In my teen years, like many teen girls, I hated how I looked and I thought I was fat. I was not fat. Although I would tell myself that I needed to lose weight I had no idea how to do this. I was not physically active; had no athletic talent and no inspiration to develop any. I did not consider starving myself as even at that age I found comfort in food.
Adulthood brought on lots of other challenges, including a failed marriage. During the marriage I was severely depressed and I gained a lot of weight. After the marriage I got better and lost some of the weight by managing my food intake. I still did not learn to get physical. On top of my poor eating habits and my lack of physical activity I had an attitude that I plenty of time and would work on my health later in life. Later is here and I am full of regrets!
As time passed and my husband, Kenny, and I started dating, I started eating more. I was never one of these girls that eats light to impress a date. After we were married, I continued to bloom and not in a good way. My largest (non-pregnant) documented weight was 226 pounds. I look back at pictures now and don’t even recognize that person. Who was she???
I was never one to yo-yo diet or to even occasionally diet. I love food. When our daughter was around seven years old I felt the need to change our families eating habits. Both her parents were overweight and I could see her learning all our bad habits. My attempts at change were unsuccessful. I could not do it on my own.
The following year on January 1st, my husband was praying about the upcoming year in his private early morning prayer time. When he prayed about his health, God told him to go run. He had never liked running; that was not his thing. He told God he would do that later, but God insisted. He found some tennis shoes in the closet and went outside. He made it around the block. He did not miss a day of running that year. He was like the post office, rain, sleet, snow, cold, or hot he ran; unlike the post office he even ran on Holidays. In one year he lost 90 pounds.
Now that he was inspired; I became inspired. We both carved out our own exercise programs and we started changing our eating habits. A little at a time we added good food and stopped eating the bad stuff. The funny thing about exercising your body is that it makes you crave the healthy stuff and mentally you realized that you don’t want to have to exercise extra to work off the junk food.
During this time, I found out something unexpected about myself – I am very competitive. I am also very motivated by money. These attributes helped me drop some of the weight very quickly. The corporation where I worked at the time had two weight loss competitions that year. Each participant paid to join the competition and anyone who gained weight had to pay a fine. The winner got the pot. I came in second on the first contest. I was furious with myself for not coming in first! I determined to win the second competition and I did it!
It took me about 18 months to lose 90 pounds. I have kept it off for five years now. I won’t say it is easy. Every day is a challenge, but it is a good challenge. I learn more every day about myself, about how to get even healthier, about new physical challenges and I am hoping to share my experiences with people so they can be inspired to LIVE THIN AND LIVE WELL!