Doing it for my daughter!

[CarolinaMedic]

So there I was...The year was 2010 and lets face it I was fat. I decided to take control and get not fat, I did well with it but did it in a way that was not conducive to staying that way. I was more or less starving myself ( not in the " I have an eating disorder " way, just not eating enough good food ). This lead to weight loss ( 240 lbs down to 195 lbs over a 10 month period) but the majority of the weight lost was muscle mass. At that point in time though, I was just happy to be skinny for once in my life and getting compliments on how good I looked. Around this time my fiance and I moved across the state for a job opportunity that I thought was my dream job but as it turns out was nothing more than a huge mistake that I still regret to this day. Here we were a young couple who had never been away from our home county for more than vacation and we decided to move 5 hours away from all of our friends and family. Needless to say it didn't take long for the stress and general unhappiness to set in. With this new found level of stress/depression which I have never experienced in my entire life, came the stress eating and complete disregard for my health. I hated going to work and as soon as I walked through the door at home all I wanted to do was sit on the couch, be lazy and eat. It also didn't help that we now lived in a town much larger than we were used to and could get all the great southern comfort foods delivered at any time of day. So in the midst of my downward spiral my fiance and I found out we were pregnant. This is hands down the happiest day of my life, second only to the day my beautiful daughter came into this world BUT with this happy news came more stress. Not only was I worried about the stress of having a baby but on top of that my fiance had to move back home, 5 hours away because she was considered high risk and wanted to be close to family and healthcare providers she knew and trusted. So for 2 months I was alone, stressed, depressed, worried and missing the love of my life and our unborn child, needless to say that helped absolutely nothing on the health front and the pounds kept creeping on...So present day, here I am moved back home with my beautiful fiance and our gorgeous baby girl ( who is now 7 weeks old ) and I have this extra 20-25 lbs I could do without. I reunited with a friend who has a degree in exercise science and we are formulating a workout routine and diet ( gonna give paleo a shot ) that will hopefully have me not only slimmer, but with more lean muscle packed on. It is a huge change for me as I have never done things the right way so I mainly joined NF for extra support and to pick up on tips, tricks and any other advice or ideas anyone would like to share. My main goal is to be fit and healthy enough to play with my daughter and do all the things she would like to do as she grows up! Secondly, I would like to be fit enough that I am comfortable walking around without a shirt on, which I have never done. My reward that keeps me striving to meet my secondary goal is a nice big rib piece tattoo that I have always wanted but never pulled the trigger on because 1) tattoos don't look all that great on love handles and 2) as mentioned before I have never been comfortable going shirtless in the shape I have always been in.

So there you have it friends, My story. I am very excited to begin this journey and will work with everything I have to get to the end!

[Guest Gemeaux]

Congratulations on your daughter !

You will lose the weight and get fit , all the best x