One Year

It has been one year. 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months.... 525,600 minutes.



One year ago today, I wrote this post and decided that I needed to do something about my weight. Last year when I wrote that post, I knew I was ready to make a change... but I honestly didn't think that I would fully commit and be able to look at myself one year later and be proud of how much I changed. Since March 28th, 2013 I have lost between 85-90lbs. However, I'm down 115lbs from my heaviest weight. This is my heaviest weight (left) and current weight (right):

I have learned many things over the past year. I’ve learned that this is a journey, losing all the weight won’t happen overnight – and funny enough, I’m okay with this. I have learned to LOVE this journey, thoroughly. Eating clean, and exercising (especially running) have helped me to feel so great – inside and out.

I’ve learned that it’s okay to slip-up/fall/cheat.. but just get back on track. Just because you eat bad things for lunch, or for an entire day... or even an entire weekend, it doesn’t mean you have to stop everything all together and just quit. Just get back up, dust yourself off, and get back to living as healthy as you can.

I’ve learned that there are going to be people who don’t fully support you – sometimes people will mock your food choices, or opting not to drink alcohol, or go out partying – who cares. Let them. Something I’ve learned over the past year is that I can’t make choices based on how other people will react or treat me because of it, I have to make the best choices for me (this was a really hard concept for me to grasp, and sometimes I still struggle with it).



This journey is far from easy. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, because it has tested me in all aspects of my life: mentally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. It’s easy to only show people on the outside (colleagues, instagram posts, facebook updates, tweets, etc) the fun or easy side of losing this weight, but let me tell you - there are struggles. For anyone who thinks that losing weight, staying committed, and making the decisions to eat clean and exercise daily are easy things to do, please come talk to me.. cause I’d like to know your secret. ‘Cause as far as I’m concerned... this shit is HARD.


This is from January (I can't believe I'm posting this online). This was the size my waist used to be.

I’ve always done my best to be open on honest about my weight-loss journey on all social media platforms, but I’ll admit... I’ve pulled back from posting anything because I’ve been in a rut. Ever since the beginning of February I’ve been hit with sickness, after sickness, after injury, after sickness, and sickness once again... not kidding. Strep throat, wisdom teeth extraction, strained hamstring, food poisoning/flu bug, and then a cold. It has been an interesting 6 or 7 weeks... and I basically haven’t been working out. I’m trying to eat as clean as I can, but honestly... I’m not impressed with myself. I’ve only gone for about 15 runs since February 1st, and this is so frustrating to me. My body just physically cannot handle running right now because my hamstring is still so sore. I’m supposed to be running a 10k on April 27th, and as it stands right now.. I may need to cancel that. My training is at a complete stand still, and I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to actually get back to running.


These are from Christmas 2011 - my heaviest weight.

The struggles of weight-loss are real. I’m disappointed that I’ve lost a lot of my strength and endurance because of these set-backs, but I’m determined to get back up. If I dwell on the things that have come my way since the start of 2014, I fear that I’ll revert back to old habits and go back to the dark place that I swore I would never go. My weight isn’t going up, it’s still going down – which is great, but I’m not making choices that will benefit my health, and that’s not okay. When I realized that today marked 1 year from the time I decided to change my life, I realized this was the push I needed to get myself back in the game. I’m recommitting myself to getting back to doing whatever I can (injury permitting) to be physically active on a daily basis, and not allow myself to have multiple cheat meals a week – just one. Here we are friends, my re-committment to this lifestyle that I worked so hard to achieve last year. I’ve still got about 40lbs to go until I hit my initial ‘goal’ weight. Who knows, I may be done at that time, or I may re-assess and set new goals for myself, we’ll see. But for now.. this is me, this is my journey, and I won’t ever stop.


Left - March 2013 | Right - December 2013



Linking up with my favourite unicorn advocate today.