Growing up, I was never really physically fit. I participated in tumbling and cheerleading, but I never really made physical fitness or nutrition a part of my life.
About halfway through my first year
of college I noticed that I had slimmed down and my pants were looser. I now
weighed around 103 pounds and was feeling especially good about myself. Instead
of gaining the Freshmen 15 I lost it! In February of 2009, I met Jordan
Gisseman, whom I would later marry. I slowly gained the weight back and by the
time we married in 2010 I was around 110 pounds again, and still not very
physically active. The first year of marriage was not as kind to me as my
freshmen year in college. I gained another 10 pounds and in 2011 when I got
pregnant, I was around 120 pounds. Living just a couple blocks from Little
Cesars didn’t help either.
I gained the typical amount of
weight during my pregnancy, but I was really feeling the effects of being
overweight early on in my pregnancy. I had acid reflux pretty much from the
very start, which I now attribute to my weight and not as much to the
pregnancy. I remember going on walks with my husband and I was extremely slow. If I tried to go faster, I would literally start huffing and puffing. By
the time my first child was born, I weighed around 150 pounds. I had to have a
cesarean delivery and was barred from doing much physically activity until I
was 6 weeks postpartum. Initially I lost weight after my baby was born, but my
bad eating habits and physical inactivity continued and I was up to around
150-160 pounds. I don’t remember the exact number, as I think I’ve blocked it
out. That moment in my life was the dark period.
While I was pregnant, we didn’t
have a full-length mirror, and I remember going maternity bra shopping and
seeing my pregnant body for the first time and bursting into tears. Instead of
my stomach being round, it had loose skin hanging at the bottom (which I now
know is called a pannus) and I had sooooo many stretch marks. I was far from
glowing and disgusted with my appearance. After I had the baby, my physical
appearance did not improve. I tried to go on walks with my daughter, and
incorporate some physical fitness in my life, but I was lost. Physical activity
had never been a part of my everyday life and I had little knowledge about
healthy eating. I was told that breastfeeding would help me lose weight (of
course that wasn’t the sole reason why I tried breastfeeding), but my baby and
I struggled with nursing and that ultimately failed after 3 months when I went
back to work now as a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN). I was stressed out
learning a new job, learning how to be a parent, and depressed with my physical
appearance and how low-energy I felt.
I had been
complaining about my weight for some time, but I had never changed my behaviors
or lifestyle. As I had done many times before, I looked at my body in my
full-length mirror, the body of someone who was overweight and had just had a
baby, and I hated it. I was repulsed by my appearance and I couldn’t fathom how
my husband could still say I was beautiful, when I felt so ugly. As my weight
increased, my spirits sunk. I fell so low that I think I hit one of those
rock-bottom moments. I knew I had to change. I was too young to feel so out of
shape, to be unable to walk up a slightly inclined slope, or ride a bike up a
hill without running out of breath and steam. I knew I had limited my body from
working at its fullest capacity. I had done this to myself and it was a hard realization.
I got myself into this mess, and now it was time to get out of it. I could not
live my life like this for one more day.
I started
using the app MyFitnessPal back in 2012 after my daughter was born. I found
Zumba classes and fell in love with them. It was then I met Shantelle Flake,
who was a Zumba instructor. I started talking to her and she told me about a
weight loss and maintenance program that was then called Take Shape For Life. I
talked to my husband Jordan about doing the program. I thought it was sure to
help me lose weight because the food would be provided, you would make your own
lean and green meal for dinner, and there was supposed to be a curriculum on
maintenance and how to live healthy after you lost the weight. Ultimately,
Jordan helped me realize that we were too poor to afford a program like that at
this point and that I should continue using MyFitnessPal as a weight loss tool
and really give it my all.
By June of 2013, I had only lost
about 4 pounds, but I was seeing some progress, which encouraged me to continue.
We moved to Houston in July so Jordan could attend medical school at Baylor
College of Medicine, and I was excited to learn our new apartment complex had a
workout facility. We quickly made friends through our church and started to be
invited to get-togethers. One of the early get-togethers was a swim party and I
felt so embarrassed in my swimsuit surrounded by girls who were skinny and
athletic. This new start fanned the flames that I had ignited only a few months
prior and I really started to dedicate myself to losing weight.
I used my
apartment workout room, and started doing Zumba and other workouts at home
through YouTube videos. I really dedicated myself to tracking my calories in
MyFitnessPal and allowed myself 1200 calories for my height, BMI, and weight. I
wasn’t always perfect in limiting myself to that many calories, but I
persistently tracked my calories and strove to be on track the majority of the
time. On average, I was losing about 4.5 to 5 pounds a month. By the end of
December 2013 I had lost 25 pounds!
I was resolute in my desire to not
only lose weight, but to maintain it. I had the realization that losing weight
and hitting my weight loss goal wasn’t the end-all of what I hoped to achieve
to be physically fit. I was enjoying how I looked and had such a confidence
boost, but I also realized how much better I felt. I had more energy and could
work out without feeling rundown. I had a huge mental boost and I was happier.
I had gained self-control and the ability to deny myself foods that were
unhealthy or unnecessary (I still indulged in lots of treats though). I wanted
fitness to be a part of my life. By 2014, I managed to get down to 106 pounds,
but struggled to maintain the weight. Maintenance was uncharted territory for
me and I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I continued to track my calories, but I
didn’t know what a normal calorie amount was for someone my size. I jumped up
and down in weight from 110 to 115, while once again working and going back to
school for my Associates degree in nursing.
By the end of my RN program, I was pregnant
again and had gained 8 pounds in my first trimester due to the stress of being
in my final semester. After I got pregnant the second time, I’m ashamed to
admit I bawled big fat tears because I was going to gain the weight back that I
had struggled so long and hard to lose, and I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to
lose it again like I had before. After my program ended, my life calmed down
and I was able to focus a lot more on eating right and physical fitness.
Instead of using pregnancy as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted and to quit
working out like I had in my first pregnancy, I continued to monitor my
calories. I hardly felt pregnant until the baby moved, and I had no morning
sickness. I had gotten a gym membership before I got pregnant and a friend
started showing me how to weight-lift and I decided to continue with it through
my second trimester, along with Zumba.
I felt amazing my whole pregnancy and I did
Zumba every week up until I had the baby. I literally did Zumba the night
before my son was born and joke that I danced myself into labor. I weighed
around 140 pounds by the end of my pregnancy in November, and by December I was
already down to 125 pounds just through losing water weight and baby weight.
The difference between my two pregnancies had been night and day, and I
attribute the ease of my second pregnancy to the fact that I really focused on
my physical and nutritional health. I also feel like it was much easier to get
back into working out and to lose weight after I had my second baby, despite
having to have another C-section. By October of 2017, I was back down to my
pre-baby weight, just shy of a year after my son was born.
Using MyFitnessPal was losing its
charm and I fell into the habit of tracking my calories without really knowing
how many calories I should limit myself to and I often fell off the wagon. For
the next year and a half, I continued to go up and down in weight as we moved
again, this time for my husband’s residency, to San Antonio, and I started
school…AGAIN…to obtain my Bachelor Degree through an online RN-BSN program. I
had always dreamed that I could get back down to 106 and I was sick of bouncing
between 110 and 115, as the higher end of that weight range was much closer to
an overweight BMI. I felt that if I could get down to 106 and bounce between
that and 110, that I could hit my ideal weight range.
I know that through the years I
have really focused on calories and weight loss, but MyFitnessPal has really
helped me and I have continued to see results with it when I use it correctly.
Not only have I focused on calories, but through the years I have incorporated
healthy meals and foods into my diet. I have continued to make physical activity
a part of my life and have gotten more into weight-lifting. This last February,
after trying and failing to lose weight, I realized that I needed to change my
tactics. I reconfigured how many calories I would need to consume in order to
lose weight at a healthy rate, and at the end of February, I started a 7-week
health and weight-loss challenge that would hopefully get me down to 106 by my
birthday, April 18th. I told myself that at the end of the
challenge, the number on the scale wasn’t what mattered, but that I finally was
consistently losing weight and getting closer to my goal. If I did not meet my
goal weight by the end of the challenge, I would continue to try until I hit
that weight.
In order to change up my weight-loss tactics,
I created a weekly spreadsheet to track my project that included charting
whether or not I ate breakfast, how many calories I consumed at each meal and
whether or not I chose to have a snack or treat, how much water I was drinking,
and how much I was sleeping, as well as if I was saying a bedtime prayer, and
if I was meeting my workout goals and going up in the amount of weight I could
lift. I tried to make my goals easily attainable and to include positive,
healthy goals that didn’t just have to do with calories, but incorporated other
areas of health, such as spiritual and mental. This chart really helped because
it gave me a second way to keep myself accountable and also helped identify any
patterns in my behavior that caused me to overeat and to find areas where I
struggled.
At the same time I started this
challenge, I was speaking with my therapist about going on a medication to help
with my bouts of depression and near-constant anxiety. I had been seeing a
therapist for the last year and a half and had developed many coping skills and
had made many behavioral changes, but I still always felt on edge. I felt I
needed to at least try medication at this point to see if it would help me. I
got on Wellbutrin and I noticed the effects a couple weeks into using the medication.
I suddenly enjoyed the small things in life and could enjoy my kids like I had
never before. Things that would have normally bothered me or had me stressing
and over-worrying about, I was able to shrug off. I felt a great weight lifted
off of me mentally, and I think the decision to utilize medication to help me
mentally helped me to overcome the huge mental hurdle I’d been having with
weight-loss.
By my birthday I weighed 107
pounds, 1 pound shy of my goal and I. Was. THRILLED! I had struggled so long to
get under 110 pounds, and here I was, so close to the weight I had lost all
hope of seeing again! True to my word, I continued to work on my weight loss
and less than a month later I reached my goal of 106…and then slipped into the
105 range only a couple days later! Before reaching my goal, I really worried
about how I would maintain the weight after I hit my goal. I did some research
and decided that what I needed was a solid calorie amount to shoot for each day
and determined that I could probably maintain my weight if I ate around 1400 to
1500 calories. Having a solid number to keep me on track has really helped me
to maintain! It feels good to track my calories, because instead of floundering
around, not knowing what I needed to maintain and inputting my calories without
a real goal, I now have something positive and solid each day to shoot for.
I’ve been able to maintain my weight for the last couple months and have even
been losing a bit still.
Not only have I done well with
maintaining, but being physically fit has really become part of who I am. I
went on vacation to visit family out of state for a month, and didn’t like the
idea of not being able to go to the gym for a month. I decided to call around
to the different gyms in the area I would be staying and see if I could find a
reasonable price for a month pass. Luck was with me and I was able to score a
FREE month pass! The whole trip I made the most of this pass and went to the
gym each week at least a couple times. It felt so good to be able to stay
within my normal workout routine and still work on my weight-lifting and
physical fitness goals. This is a prime example that I have changed my health
behaviors for the better.
Something that has really stuck
with me that my therapist and I talked about in regards to food is that food is
used to fuel us. For me, I had viewed food as an aid to help me feel better
when I was sad or upset or stressed. Food was at every party and it was more
than socially acceptable to not just have one piece of cake, but two! Parties
and get-togethers were considered areas where I could over-indulge and no one
would judge. My therapist helped me see that food was something we used to
energize us and make us feel better. She challenged me to consider how I might feel
afterwards if I consumed a certain food. Did I need that food to feel
energized, or was it simply excess? If I wanted the food, was it worth the cost
of how it might make me feel later? Was I listening to my body as I ate to tell
me if I had had enough? These last couple of months I have really changed my
behavior and perception of food. I use it to fuel me and have found other
things not associated with food to comfort me when I’m emotional. At parties,
if I want cake (or any treat), I’ve learned that I don’t need a big piece or to
even eat the whole piece to feel the satisfaction of the treat. I’ve tried to
integrate these behaviors into my daily life. I listen to my body to tell me if
I’m full and often try to only eat half of a meal, sometimes less and sometimes
more, depending on how I feel. I’ve really changed my relationship with food to
one where I’m the master and not the servant. Food is a tool I use to make my
body feel better, and if it doesn’t feel better after I eat, then I need to
change what I’m doing.
These last years have shown me how
interconnected all the areas of health are. It is much harder for me to make
changes when I’m mentally sick. It’s hard for me to feel the Spirit and be
spiritually healthy when I’m mentally down. When I make myself physically sick
with food or inactivity, it makes me mentally sick. It’s not easy trying to
find the balance of being healthy in every area, but I can say that I am
getting closer to it every day as I constantly strive to improve myself. We
make the decision every day, either consciously or subconsciously, whether
we’re going to let ourselves slip away, stay stagnant, or improve. We’re going
to have good days and bad days and sometimes there will be hurdles to jump over
or a wall that stands in our way, but our human will determines whether we will
let these things permanently affect us for the worse, or whether we can figure
out how to overcome these obstacles and make our weaknesses strengths.
I still can’t say how exactly I’ve
managed to summon up the motivation and self-determination to lose weight and
to change my health lifestyle for the better. It’s probably a multitude of
variables that look different for me with each change I’ve made in my life. I
can say that without my ability to act, change would never have happened. I
made a reachable goal that had a reasonable timeframe. I created a plan to help
me reach that goal and tracked my progress. When I fell off the wagon, I didn’t
stay down. I got back up EVERY. TIME. Just because I fell off, didn’t mean that
it was time to quit. The point of change isn’t to reach a goal, but in
recognizing the process in learning how to change. That insight gives us a deep
understanding of how we work as individuals. We have to get comfortable with
being uncomfortable.
As in weight-lifting, discomfort
means growth, and we have to appreciate the discomfort. Not only that, but we have to really be aware
when something isn’t working and strategize how we can do things differently so
we can be more successful. Alison Faulkner, from the Alison Show or Awesome
with Alison, once said something along the lines of when we constantly do the
same thing, without acting or changing our behavior, that becomes our story, so
if I were to constantly complain about my weight to people, but never act or do
anything about it, that becomes my story, my boo-hoo tale that I can cry to
people over and over again. I didn’t want my inability to lose weight or to
make healthy choices to become my story. I wanted to change my life and make it
better. As I was searching through my photos, trying to scrounge up some full-length photos of myself and my weight-loss/healthy journey, I find it interesting that the last couple of years I have no full-length photos that track my weight loss. Instead, the photos I've found show me living my life, doing the things I love, and some big life-growth moments. I realize now that I've been able to stop obsessing over my negative image and really love myself these past couple of years. I've been able to live life to the fullest and really enjoy my life and the people in it...and I still really enjoy food! That will never change!
From all of this, I have learned
that these changes and goals are just pieces and parts of my health journey.
When I imagine my future, I imagine myself eating yummy foods and not getting
sick because I over-indulged or ate something that wasn’t good for me. I
imagine going on trips with my family and my husband and being able to keep up.
I imagine being a grandma and still being able to chase after my grandkids. I
am still learning how to improve, but my passion for change and growth has never
subsided and I have always fed that desire for change and knowledge. I have
fanned the flames that have driven my life to this journey of improvement. My
fire may dim and sometimes my fire may be a roaring blaze, but ultimately, I
control whether my fire lives or dies, whether it gets smothered or becomes an
uncontrollable inferno. We can never stop fanning the flames. We can never be
lulled into complacency. We’re either living, or we’re dying. So, do you want
to carry out this journey determining each day to live and be happy, or are you
only thinking of the end goal, never appreciating the growth, never desiring
change, only thinking that one day you’ll be in the ground, and what will it
have mattered? We need to take care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so that we can "run and not be weary; walk and not faint."
