got me thinking...

I am involved in the Precision Nutrition online community and read a few posts today about women's bodies. These got me thinking again... something I tend to do :) I have often thought a lot about how I believe powerlifting truly saved me but have probably never written it out. I used to be overweight... pretty much my childhood. Then in my 20s I found Weight Watchers and lost the weight... had a second baby and had to lose it all again. And I kept losing... I was smaller than I had ever been in my life... I probably weighed less at 26 than I did at 8. People, family in particular, started commenting about my weight. But, these same people had been the ones to tell me I needed to lose weight... so, I used them to fuel my weight loss fire. I remember the day I got on the scale and it read 119lbs... I was so excited. I vividly remember thinking that I could trick WW into allowing me to work while being underweight because I would be weighing in at night with clothes on, so they could be fooled.

Then, one day, my brother asked me to squat in our grandmother's kitchen. And he teased me and I told him to teach me. A few weeks later, he taught me. A month later I joined a gym and he put together a program for me. I told him I was eating MORE as a means of ensuring I could get stronger... I mean, I was UP to almost 1500kcal a day most days... hahaha!! Oh how foolish I was.

At my first meet I weighed in and walked out into the lifting area to realize that my name, age and weight were up on a huge screen.... and I realized that if I was enjoying lifting as much as I thought I was, I would have to give up my obsession with my weight. And I did...

Fours years later (this month) is when I started my first program... today, I still struggle some days with my body and weight. Some days I wonder how big I will get. Some days I panic and have to remind myself that being skinny fat wasn't good either and that I love lifting more than I love being skinny.

A few years ago, when I was going through my own stuff, I banished the phrase "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" from my WW meeting... and now, when my members go to use that saying I remind them "nothing tastes as good as healthy feels".

I honestly don't know where I would be if my brother hadn't asked me to squat in my grandmother's kitchen that day...

Dec 2005... about 124lbs... wasn't quite at my smallest yet


My last meet... Oct 2010