My Fitness Journey

2003: Mother's Day. Weight: 246 pounds.

        On the morning of January 26, 2009, I woke up unhealthy and unhappy. I weighed just under 250 pounds. At only 5 feet 3 inches tall this put my BMI at 43.6 ... or morbidly obese. I was only 36 years old with two small children and I was quickly on my way to an early death. As my feet touched the ground that morning, reality hit me square in the deepest part of my soul: I was a food addict with an eating disorder who was living a lesser quality of life due to obesity and I was leading my children down the same path of addiction. Read that again, slowly: I was leading my children down the same path of addiction. 
       In was in this moment of raw and shameful honesty that I knew I needed to change, not only for myself, but also for my children. Obesity was making my world smaller and by default my children's world smaller. I had no idea how to actually lose weight and become healthy, but I instinctively knew I needed to modify my diet (not go on a diet) and exercise daily. So that's what I did. I began slowly by reducing the amount of soda I was drinking and making better eating choices as well as exercising twice a day for 30 to 60 minutes each time. My exercise consisted of just walking on the treadmill. I was so obese and out of shape that walking at a speed of 1.2 for 30 minutes was difficult and caused me to lose my breath. But I did it and after the first five weeks of diet modification and daily exercise,  I had lost 30 pounds.
      It was on March 2, 2009 that I went for my first run. I weighed a little over 200 pounds and I could barely run for an entire minute at a time. Everything hurt. It hurt to breath, it hurt to blink, it hurt to live in this body that was very sick. Every day I ran a little more, until I could string a mile together, two miles, five miles, ten miles. Finally on October 17, 2010, a year and a half after beginning my weight loss journey and losing 100 pounds, I became a marathoner. More importantly, I had beaten obesity, I had beaten my food addiction,  and I was now cardiovascularly healthy. Exercise had saved my life.
       Slowly, through my own journey, I began to understand the enormous problem of food addiction, obesity, and the lack of physical activity that was plaguing our nation. I felt compelled and driven to be an agent of change, so I returned to college to seek a degree in Physical Education, Exercise Science. Through my educational journey, I stumbled upon the the phrase "Exercise is Medicine" and a significant paradigm shift occurred within me. In my studies, I began to focus on the science of exercise and how exercise can and does act as an actual medication within the body to not only prevent disease, but also to reverse damage already done to the body, as well as, send select diseases into remission.
      Today, I am finishing up my Master's Degree and working to spread the the idea of exercise as a viable medication. Check out my About Me page to learn more about my education and research experience.