Guest Post - Melanie

Hey everyone! If you missed it, make sure to check out Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 in Florida posts!

But without further ado, here is a wonderful post that I’m sure will inspire you from my sister-in-law, Melanie!

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When my sister-in-law asked if I would post about my weight loss on her blog while she was on vacation I realized that I had never documented anything about it!  So here it goes...bare with me, but hopefully I can get my story across to you.

I couldn't even tell you the day or month, but it was sometime in the fall of 2006.  As a way to relive stress, I started working out.  Not even with the goal to lose weight.  I would always say, "I workout so I can eat whatever I want."  And I pretty much did.  Not excessively, but if I wanted something I ate it.  Then a couple months later, around Christmas I believe, I remember weighing myself, and the scale said 189.  Wow is all I could say.  I knew a lot of people around me that were larger than I was, and people always tell me now, "you weren't fat before".  But seeing the scale say 189 was a HUGE wake up call!  I was a size 14 at the time.
Since I was already working out to help with stress, I decided why not change what I was eating and see what happened.  I quit eating fast food, I cut back on candy, and started watching my portion sizes.  So to me it wasn't huge changes, but enough that in a month or two my pants were too big.  And let me tell you, it was a great feeling!

At the gym I started to increase the resistance levels of every exercise I was doing.  At this point I was just doing cardio.  The machine that I grew to love was the stair machine.  If you've never been on one, basically isn't a revolving staircase.  The first time I went on it I remember how bad my muscles burned and I hadn't even been on the machine 2 minutes!  But I was determined to do it.  Trainers at the gym said it was the best machine to burn fat, and I am proof of that!  I would do 30 minutes on the elliptical machine and 30 minutes on the stair machine.  I went from level 1 to level 14 and depending on the program I was on would do between 160 and 180 flight of stairs a day.

Besides working out I played volleyball 2 to 3 times a week, and when warm out rollerbladed and rode my bike as much as I could.  I kept watching what I ate and quit drinking pop.  But I never did give up ice cream!
The lowest my weight has ever been is 152 pounds.  So I lost 37 pounds total!  Right now I weigh in the upper 150's I still work out at least 4-5 times a week and have started weight training.  I wear between a 6 and 8, and am extremely happy i've been able to keep the weight off.  Most people say you're skinny, what do you weigh, 120 pounds?  I look at them and say, are you serious?  They don't believe me when I say I'm over 150 pounds.  Goes to show you, it doesn't matter what the scale says, just go by how you look and feel!

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Thanks for sharing this Melanie, you were a big inspiration for me both with weight loss and fitness!! And I love how you pointed out that the number on the scale isn’t what matters!