I was a stick from the time I was born until I joined the Navy. I never weighed myself and I really did eat anything and everything I wanted. I wasn’t the most active kid and I spent my school career trying to find a way out of gym class. When I enlisted at 18, I weighed 113 lbs. Boot camp added 12 lbs of muscle on my frame, and I was 125 lbs when I made it to my first duty station — a training command not unlike college. Like most teenagers away from home for the first time, I gained the “freshman 15″ or in my case, 22 lbs over the course of 3 months. I was 147 when I became pregnant for the first time. I gained 53 lbs and was hitting the scale at 200 when my daughter was born.
In January of 2002, I decided it was time for a change. I was watching Body Challenge (a precursor to Biggest Loser) on Discovery Health and figured, if they can do it, I can do it. I turned off the tv and went for a run.
I was hooked.
Between watching my calories and running, I lost 75 lbs and was back to my boot camp weight of 125. That’s when I decided to start training for my first marathon.
I’ve been “training” for my first marathon for almost 8 years.
From the start, I was plagued with injuries and never made it over 5 miles. Eventually I was diagnosed with chondromalacia and I have about 1/3 the amount of cartilage a normal person has. I would stop running for months at a time and then have to start all over when I began to run again. Of course, when I stopped running, I didn’t change my diet and I slowly gained back most of the weight I had previously lost.
Of course, then the husband and I were lucky enough to get pregnant, and while I would love to run 26.2 miles when I’m 6 months pregnant, my body just wasn’t going to let that happen. Now that Harper Grace is here, I can get back to my fitness goals and run my first marathon!
