Battle de Sammi: Ode to My Friends with Weight Loss Blogs

In high school I looked like this:

15 year old Sammi!

 ... and just like every teenage girl I thought I was an obese whale. It wasn't until later on, especially when I was at my heaviest, that I realized how completely insane I was. When that picture was taken, I want to say I was between 112-115, I've been 5'3 since I hit high school... so I was 5'3, and was about 15 years old.

I used to hate wearing tight clothes and wince at the thought of being in a bikini, but what I really should have been doing was showing off that crazy figure while I had it! I should have been prancing through the halls of school naked instead of beating myself up. I thought because I didn't have a flat stomach or washboard abs I wasn't skinny enough but when in all reality... I was.

I didn't really start to gain weight until my senior year. I suppose the salt and vinegar chip & cream cheese bagel sandwiches I used to consume on a daily basis were finally starting to catch up to me. By the time I graduated I was about 120 where I stayed for most of college.... Save for the time my former boyfriend and I broke up, I became really sick for a month, then miraculously went back down to 112 lbs. Though as soon as I started eating normally again, I was back at 120.

Now, post college, enter the real world... this is when things started to change. Before this cushy, stagnant cubicle job, I worked at Sam's Club where I spent 30ish hours a week lifting 50 lbs jars of mayonnaise and 1 ton bags of cat liter, so I was still getting some sort of a cardio workout. But when I made that jump into the horrors of an office job, I ended up gaining quite a bit of weight. At my heaviest I was 137 (though it was probably more, but I stopped weighing myself for a while after that), and I looked like this:

Only you can prevent forest fires...

And closer so you can see the face...

In the top picture I was about 20, and the bottom about 22. I feel like the combination of the 40 hours a week I'm required to sit on my ass for, mixed with alcohol, then mixed with a mixture of medications (anti anxieties, birth control, etc.) is what lead me to that point. I was super against working out and tried countless times to just count calories and diet, which never led me anywhere.

But literally a week after the bottom picture was taken, a pivotal moment of my life happened. It's much too long of a story to get into, but the short version is that was the point in time I stopped seeing my ex boyfriend. We were on again off again for a year, I ended up going to NYC with a friend, he stopped responding to my calls, I thought for a brief amount of time he had died, and in a fit on anxiety I had stopped eating. Some people stress eat, I just can't eat, but when I got back home I was pleased to see that I had actually lost around 8 lbs. I knew how unhealthy it is to lose weight that way, so for the next few weeks I lived off of a diet of yellow Vitamin Water and Cliff Bars. So for the next few years I floated between 120-130. And looked a little bit like this:

Oh heyyy Harvest Fest!

It wasn't until 2 years ago that I decided to go to the gym and to just start being active in general. I started out just going once or twice a week, then by the summer of last year I really buckled down on the exercise. My boyfriend and I went out and bought shitty little mountain bikes from Wal Mart, and that ended up being the best idea we could have ever had. I started riding almost every day, and when I couldn't/didn't I would "Gihad" as my boyfriend and I call it... Gihad is actually Total Body Fit with Gilad and it's a half an hour work out show I DVR from FitTV. That show kicks... my... ass! But with the combination of both those things I ended up getting down to 114 lbs. Which, if we can recap for a second, was my weight when I was 15 years old.

Looking down and seeing that number was one of the highlights of my life. My main goal with the exercise, particularly the bike riding, was to actually get in some sort of shape so the weight loss was a happy surprise. From that moment on I vowed to stick with it. Unfortunately, I've had a hard time being as disciplined as I was during the summer, but I'm hoping with the warmer months here again (hopefully, I do live in New England... 80 one day, snowing the next) I'll get back into the bike riding.

Another thing that helped me out was when I stopped drinking sugary drinks and started drinking TONS of water. The only time I allowed myself sugar was in my coffee which aided in the tail end of my weight loss (I was stuck at 118 for a little while and only made it to 114 with the water/exercise combo). Much like the exercise, I've lost a lot of discipline when it comes to this, but I'm hoping to get back on track with it too very soon.

A few months ago I had gone back up to 118, but after some correcting of my eating habits, I'm now back at 115. And I look like this:

Why yes, I am a Sim! (Taken at AB, don't judge)

And closer to see the face difference....

 So to all my weight loss blog friends, keep with it! I'm so proud of you all! My advice is to try to make a life change and not just go on a diet. I still eat whatever I want because I KNOW I don't have the will power for a diet, but to compensate for that I practice portion control. I go to the gym usually for only a half an hour to do the circuit, or I do a half an hour of yoga or Gilad because I KNOW I will stick to it. I figure, it's only a half an hour of my entire day, and after it's over I will be proud of myself. I got a bike because I always enjoyed riding, and if I'm enjoying my form of exercise it doesn't quite feel like exercise. It took a lot of trial and error, but I finally found a happy balance between diet and exercise I can actually stick with. And every time I see a "skinny" picture of myself I'm reminded of all the hard work it took to get here.

So keep on keepin' on ladies! Reading your blogs and seeing your motivation helps me every day :)