Starting out.

My name is Elizabeth. I am 24 years old and currently weigh 161 pounds. I have struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember…in fact I currently weigh the least that I can remember in my adult life, but I am still not completely happy with my weight. My goal is to be 140lbs.

My sophomore year of college I began to eat and drink a lot more than ever before, mostly this was all emotional eating due to the loss of my mother from cancer. I managed to balloon up from a size 14 to an 18 in one year. When I had to buy a pair of size 18 jeans was when I realized I needed to do something. I began to use sparkpeople.com to track my food intake and started to work out. I quickly lost some of the weight and got down to a size 16. I weighed approximately 210 pounds. But I stopped there; I was busy in school and was more focused on graduating with good grades then loosing weight. It also didn’t help that my eating habits were HORRIBLE. I used to order a “family feast” from KFC and eat it myself and then there was the 3 hour road trip my best friend and I took to New Jersey for deep fried hot dogs.

This is me with the hot dogs I mentioned...approx 200-210lbs.

Once I graduated from college in 2008 I dropped about 20 pounds without really trying. My eating habits changed drastically once I got back home. I still was by no means eating healthy, but I wasn’t eating a family feast any more. I also got a job where I was walking for a good portion of my day.

In October of 2008 I weighed about 190 pounds and was back in a size 14. I changed jobs and went from one fairly active job to one that I was on my feet even more. In order to get my job I had to pass a physical test, it wasn’t hard at all but did involve a quarter mile run that had to be completed in under 3.5 minutes….that’s a 10 minute mile…I realized I really needed to change when I almost didn’t complete the QUARTER mile run, the only thing that got me through it was knowing that if I stopped to walk – even once – I would loose my job. So, I started working out again. I got down to about 175pounds and wearing a size 12 by the middle of 2009, but my diet was still not good. I stayed there until about a month and a half ago.

I weighed in at 176 pounds at the beginning of August 2010. I decided to start using sparkpeople.com again and track all food that I was eating and I began to work out 3-5 times a week. I eat between 1200-1600 calories a day and aim to burn at least 500 through exercise. In a little over a month I have lost 14 pounds and am now at 161. I truly feel that I am committed to making this change be a permanent one. I am tired of being fat. I want to finally be healthy, but I am determined to do it in a way that I can maintain, I have no desire to cut carbs out, or only drink liquids…I want to do this the right way, by changing my eating habits and working out.