I grew up in a healthy home. My parents were as athletic as most in the 80’s: my mom regularly went to aerobic classes and power walked and my dad did push ups and sit ups on his bedroom floor every morning before work. We ate well, learned the value of good food and healthy choices.

I played soccer through junior high and high school, and then started playing rugby, which I continued through university. I worked out, did enough cardio to survive. But I started drinking a lot, and I spend most of my time at the gym gabbing instead of working out.

After university, I started working, stopped playing rugby, moved in with my boyfriend (and would-be husband). I went to the gym two or three times a week before work, I ran occasionally. But there was still Dairy Queen and drinking and deep fried wings with beer most Thursday nights. I had always been thin, so any working out I did was mostly for maintenance.

In August 2005, I got pregnant with my daughter (surprise!). Pregnancy, while completely shocking, was a happy time. A happy time filled with ice cream and cheesies. Being allowed to gain weight was basically my express card into indulgence. Fast forward 42 weeks, June 2006, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl at 9lbs3oz… and had 50 pounds to lose.

Now, I’ve heard people say things about weight falling off when they were breastfeeding, but I figured that burning those extra 1000 calories a day was still good reason to keep eating whatever the hell I wanted. Plus, having a baby is hard and white rolls and potato salad made me feel better.

When the baby was 4 months old, my boyfriend proposed. I had been running, and was starting to lose a bit of my baby weight, but I now had incentive: The Wedding. While wedding plans began to get underway, I decided enough was enough and I joined Weight Watchers. And kept it up for six whole weeks. But I was happy where I was, within spitting distance of my pre-pregnancy weight and though I felt like my body looked like a mere shell of its former self, it was nothing that the corset inside my dress wouldn’t take care of. I turned the cruise control back on, lamenting my belly fat while eating cookies after lunch. Spending an hour at the gym mostly fiddling with my shoe laces/iPod/controls on the treadmill instead of focusing on the workout.

Fast forward again to August 2007, enter fetus number 2. I vowed I wouldn’t let myself go again, I had worked too hard to get rid of all that weight, and this pregnancy wouldn’t leave me 50 pounds overweight shoveling pasta into my mouth. It helped that I craved things like Greek salad and orange juice. But the due date came and the due date went and everyday that passed by, I ate more and more and somehow, after my 8lbs4oz second baby girl was born… I was once again left with 50 pounds to lose.

I didn’t waste time the second time around. I joined Weight Watchers when the baby was six weeks old, with a goal of becoming a lifetime member. I started running when she was somewhere between one month and six weeks old, and my goal was to do a 10k race in October. Weight Watchers kept me focused, and made me feel rewarded for all my hard work each Tuesday night. Not only did I run that 10k race, I achieved my personal best (1 hour). And then I ran a 5k race and achieved another personal best (27 minutes).

Two weeks ago, I became a Life Time Member at Weight Watchers. Since giving birth I’ve lost more than 50 pounds. I am three weeks away from running in the Hypothermic Half Marathon. Fitness is no longer about maintaining. I have found strength within myself that wasn’t there before. I stay fit because I like feeling strong. Being strong makes me a better mother, a better wife, a better person. From achieving a high level of fitness, I have realized that I can do anything I want with my life. And it’s only just begun.

– article by Kaitlyn

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Features, Success Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.