Introduction

If you are looking for a blog with recipes and motivation, this is not it. I am not a smartphone person, I don't have apps to track it all, and somehow all of those things in my purse need to be cut down. Therefore, I am planning to use this to hold myself accountable so that I can quit worrying about everyone else's workouts, and use what I need to return to my fitness level I want and need.

I am a fitness professional. I help coach other folks into getting their wellness in order. But despite regular workouts and relative strength and endurance, stress, life schedules, middle age (yup, just admitted it on paper) and a hormone imbalance have my weight almost out of control. As I sit here typing this, I weigh 176 pounds. I am 5'6", and this weight is about ten or so pounds shy of what I weighed when I went in to the hospital to have our first child. Ouch.

I work really hard at fitness, I teach several classes a week, train in the gym, lift regularly so I keep myself strong, and fight the same issues everyone else does. As a military wife, I juggle lots- the small farm we live on, the children (now ages 11 and 16), a job teaching aerobics at a few local gyms, my job teaching fitness and training upcoming trainers at the local community college, my aunt in a care home in the city (my Mom is the POA, but auntie wanted this state instead of the one where my Mom lives), and whatever else life throws at me.

I grew up as a ballerina, with all the bad eating habits that dancers can have. I kind of thought that old dancers no metabolism thing wouldn't happen to me. Or if it did, I would figure out how to manage it when it happened. Yeah, I know, but the dance is a strong pull, and addiction of sorts for those of us who feel the dance in our blood. I went from that to training with the military, an injury that led to knee surgery, and becoming a fitness instructor/ trainer as I kept putting myself back together.

When my husband and I married in 1996, I weighed 128. I came back from our honeymoon at 126- he knows I need my workouts, so despite the eating out, we did a lot of hiking! I was soon pregnant with our first, and despite pre-eclampsia that was easy to come back from. My weight went through ups and downs with my health- one medications had me up in the 140s, then I took a full time job, just as 9/11 hit the country, and got pregnant the second time. I started the job at my goal weight. The job was fitness related- but a desk job. So it was a huge change in my fitness regimen. It felt like it took forever to lose the weight from the second baby! I was ranging around 140 as I changed jobs so I could be home more and my husband was not.  I was back to working in a gym, on research, and my office was 5 floors up, so despite being around 140-145 again, I was running and lifting and teaching. But it was stressful.

I ended up driving the kids to town for school, and some bullying began. The stress as the bullying got worse, my husband kept travelling, and I kept adding to my list got harder. I ended up being laid off from a job, and took the time to get life in order- or so I thought. I had gone back to school, and things seemed great. But hten I started hurting all over, and the stress got worse with the bullies and the driving, and the weird people manipulating things and trying to mess with my children. I tried to be nice, I was exhausted. I got really sick, but was still needing to juggle it all.

With the pain and soreness getting worse, and finals to the second semester back in college, and getting up and going in anyway while sick, I gained ten pounds in less than a week.

The weight wouldn't go away. I got back to running, but hurt all the time. The doctor told me he didn't know, just take some pain pills. I started working at the college. Farm problems kept me up late, and I kept trying to be nice to the crazy people to make things work a little lounger. I gained another ten pounds in like a week. It felt like there were these little set points that would happen. There was surgery for ovarian cysts, and I ended up asking a nurse about other physicians, since I didn't feel like the doctor was listening. She recommended one, who turned out to find the hormone problem.

Now I am on natural hormones, and ten pounds went away. The stress got much worse, and we ended up pulling the children out to home school them. The ten pounds went back on. So now, here i am, working my way through writing it out.  It isn't pretty, but I am going to use this, like we teach our clientele, to put it on paper, hold myself accountable, and move forward.

Here goes...