"Shredding My Losses" Make the change! 1 year and 100lbs lighter!!

Guest blog by: Jennifer Seville. She's a full time mom and wife who within ONE YEAR lost 100lbs!! Read  all about her amazing journey in her book "Shredding My Losses" Make the change!

I was given the chance to read her book and I'm SO glad I did. She's truly an inspiration that even at 275lbs you can still achieve your weight loss goals.  

 

"When people hear I lost over 100 lbs, I get the inevitable question of HOW DID YOU DO IT?!  I know what they wanna hear, which pill, fad diet, dvd set, or surgery did I complete?  The conversation ends shortly after when I say all I did was eat healthy and exercise.  If you stick around long enough to hear my whole story, you will come to find out that I do have some interesting things to say…

I wasn’t always overweight.  I was super athletic; a gymnast for over  10 years.  I turned 19, met my soul mate, I got pregnant, and began doing what I was told to do, eating for two!  First mistake, because I totally abused that statement, and it showed with the 90 lbs I put on during that pregnancy.  The two years following that child we managed to get married, buy a house, and have another child.  Little to no “time” in between to go back to my athletic build. 

Two more years go by and I have my third and final child, and weighing in at a whopping 275 pounds! 275 pounds found me at a completely different person.  I went from athletic and attractive to depressed and overweight with a huge chip on my shoulder.  In my eyes, the world was out to get me.  Little did I know, I WAS OUT TO GET ME!  With every bite I took, and every pair of baggy pants and shirts I wore to hide the real problem.  I hid for a few years and told myself that my weight issues were all due to my pregnancies and it was normal.

 

It’s not normal to weight 275 pounds.  It’s not normal to hate yourself when you look in the mirror.  It’s not normal to wear sweatpants and sweatshirts every single day because jeans do not fit you.  I was far from acting normal.

 

My eldest daughter turned 5 in February of 2011 and it hit me.  I was a stay at home mom and she was going to be starting Kindergarten in the fall.  I wanted to be that active stay at home mom that goes to all the PTA meetings and attends field trips and has play dates with all the other stay at home moms.  Who would wanna hang out with some depressed overweight mom??

Something clicked, and my journey began.  My husband’s family all were members of the local YMCA and encouraged me to join and attend classes.  TOTALLY out of my comfort zone but I went, and fell in love.  That athletic person came out in me, little did I know it was just in hiding.  I was attending all diff. kinds of group fitness classes and desperately trying to watch what I was eating at home and the pounds were actually shedding off of me.  My dedication was showing when I dropped over 20 lbs in the first month.  Cutting soda and teas and all the sugary snacks I was known to eat I’m sure helped with that 20 pound weight loss.  I wanted more, and kept going…

I found a love for “running”  Let’s not call it running at first, let’s call it completely dying and probably looking like a fool but I did it so don’t laugh me kinda running!  I even completed a 5K race at 200 lbs in 34 minutes!  I was beginning to feel proud of myself again and feeling accomplished and goal driven in my new lifestyle.  9 months later, I had dropped over 100 pounds, 10 pant sizes, and 3 shirt sizes!!  I was a completely different person inside and out. 

 

I can’t stress to people how important health wise it is to be at a healthy weight but more importantly for your heart and soul.  I hate knowing that there are still people out there feeling the way I used to feel about themselves.  It is no way to live your life living it hating yourself and being depressed.  Hiding from society solves nothing!  Once I opened up and admitted to people I needed help, was when I started to get positive results in my life. 

 

I kept a journal during the whole process that I would write about my workouts and foods as well as my personal thoughts and frustrations along the way.  It was a handy tool to stay accountable and on track on a daily basis.  Once I hit the 100 lb mark and was re-evaluating my goals I decided to publish my personal journal into a book.  It’s called “Shredding My Losses” and its available on amazon.com as an e-book as well as paperback.  It has my private thoughts during this tremendously hard weight loss journey but also illustrates how extremely rewarding it can be at the end.  It’s been said to be a must read for anyone seeking for extra motivation or wanting to read about a “real person”.  I’m not a celebrity, I did not take the easy way out, I’m just an ordinary person who made a change for the better and really wants to help others get to feel what I feel.  Proud!

 

I started a facebook page called “Change One Thing” to pay it forward to others and open myself up to them about my journey and give them somewhere to open up to me about theirs.  I still journal/blog for people to read on my website at www.changeonething.info and will continue to try and help society with the horrible epidemic of obesity.

Just remember, you are not alone!  We are all in this together!"