It’s about time I started to record my journey, I have a little catching up to so I might as well start at the beginning. 

I’m 55 years young, 5’11” and as of today weigh between 141 and 143 pounds.  I’m lucky to have been active almost all of my life.  Right now my weight is essentially the same as it was in college. 

Part 1 - Ancient History

I grew up in an area where I walked to school (a little over a mile each way) and rode my bike nearly everywhere else.  It was a neighborhood where my parents kicked me out of the house after school and told me to go play.  My parents were also active, and my mother was very health conscious before it was the in thing to do.  I remember her going to exercise class at the Y twice a week.  We spend summers on the South Jersey Shore and I spend time sailing, swimming, and being in or on the water.  (I think that is where my love of kayaking originated). 

As a teenager, my main sport was horses - and I was lucky to have a stable not far from home and was allowed to become a working student.  The work part was mostly shoveling stalls, hauling bales of hay, bags of grain, cleaning tack, grooming, and sometimes even riding.  The stable had show hunters, jumpers, 3 day event horses, and race horses.  I was tall for a rider so I developed a mental image of myself as ‘Big’.  Of course that was far from reality, but it’s been an image that I have struggled with all my life.  From the time I was 12 until my early 40’s (about 30 years) horses were my passion.  At one time I seriously thought about trying for the 72 Olympics, but my horse was injured.  I did spend some time training with the US equestrian team. 

In College, I gave up on ever being in serious internal competition and decided to become a veterinarian.  I was essentially pre-med with a few animal science courses thrown in, and of course my equine companion came with me.  I was riding a minimum of 5 days a week, riding a bicycle all over campus, and I joined the outdoors club and discovered other outdoor activities like back packing, rock climbing, and caving to add some variety.  There was no such thing as diet or nutrition.  It was go to the college dining hall, and eat everything in sight.  I never thought about gaining weight and never worried about gaining weight.  If I put on a few pounds here and there, well I was a ‘Big’ person and I could carry it.  My activity level was my salvation though and essentially maintained a normal weight all through school.

Part 2 - Reality Check - Work, Marriage, and Life

I did go to veterinary school, specialized in horses (Animal Sports Medicine) and somewhere found time to get married.  When I finished Veterinary School, I moved to Massachusetts and started working at the race track, and teaching animal science for veterinary technicians.  I still had my horse and was still riding, but school had taken most of my focus for the last 4 years.  Suddenly I found myself spending more time in the car than on my bike, or walking, and less time on my horse.  To make matters, worse, my husband was rapidly putting on weight and his eating habits were even worse than mine, and things were not really good between us.  I had the ‘Oh My God!!’ moment when I got on the scale and the numbers were over 170 (and rising).  I had been trying diets.  I would go on and diet and lose 5 pounds, go off the diet and gain 10. Obviously that trend was just getting me more and more out of shape and more and more depressed. I finally gave up.  I kept telling myself that I was a big person and I could carry the weight.  I decided to stop dieting, cut back a little to keep from gaining any more weight and see what happened. 

I decided on a few basic ‘rules’

1. Nothing was forbidden - I could eat anything I wanted, as much as I wanted, but only when I wanted it.
2. I would only eat when I was hungry - that was the biggest one. Back then I would finish with the horses, usually I was very hungry and would grab a snack, then I would fix dinners with my husband essentially eat a second dinner with him. 
3. I would cut back, just a little.  I switched to low fat milk in my coffee instead of cream, stopped using processed sugar, reduced the amount of salad dressing, ate one less piece of bread, the small donut instead of the big one, etc.

After about 2 weeks I got back on the scale and the miracle had begun and I was actually starting to lose weight.  Not 10 pounds in one week the way the diets liked to claim but just a pound here and there.  I started the non-diet in January and by the end of the May, I was 25 pounds lighter, 2 sizes smaller and really enjoying life. By the end of the year, I weighed 130 pounds (actually too thin) - back to riding weight (exercise rider for the race horses and back into competition in show jumping).  I also lost 250 pounds from the sofa - my husband and I separated and eventually divorced.  I started playing racket ball, got back into skiing, joined a gym to keep up the workouts in the long cold New England winters and began seriously working out.  Life was good.

Part 3 - Horses, Skis, and Boats

The next 10 years of my life was so fast, I almost don’t remember what I was doing.  I worked on the racetrack, first taking care of horses, then working for the Massachusetts Racing Commission in charge of animal health at the tracks.  I belonged to a health club - it was more than a gym.  I played in racquetball leagues, volleyball leagues, took fitness classes, worked out, and still kept between 1 and 4 horses in training.  My old horse from college was finally retired and I had several others in competition, plus the race track rehabs.  (I was a personal trainer and physical therapist for horses as well as being their doctor). 

Looking back on that part of my life, all I see is constant motion.  At one point I started a fitness program, just to organize my workouts, I weighed 128 pounds (at 5’11") and had a body fat of 13%.  I’m not sure what I was running away from, but there was no chance that it was going to catch me.  When I wasn’t riding, I was skiing (at least in the winter) or out in the ocean with a friend on our boat (in the summer).  Those two activates are probably what saved my sanity.  Was I happy then, I actually think I was.  I felt like I could be, do, or have anything I wanted.  I just had to decide what I wanted. 

That was when I started looking at personal growth.  I had a friend from aerobics classes who introduces me to some personal development seminars, and that gave me some time to stop, breath, look at my life and begin to make some rational choices.  The race track lifestyle was not a healthy environment, mentally, physically, or emotionally.  I was spending more time skiing in Vermont, and even spending summers in the mountains.  I met the love of my life and decided it was time to change.  I quit the race track, moved to Vermont and spend the next 2 years bar tending, skiing, learning to golf, and dealing with life without horses.

Part 4 - Florida

So my life continues in 10 year cycles - the winter wonderland of Vermont was no more real than the backside of Suffolk Downs.  Reality check.  My significant other and I moved to Florida and there I decided to start over and find a ‘real job’ .  I started with a temp job doing some typing and word processing (I had to hide the doctorate of veterinary medicine to even get an interview) .  It was a minimum wage job, but just what I needed to get my life back together.  Things were a little shaky with the significant other, I didn’t know anyone in the Orlando area, and my self esteem was, should I say, less than desirable.  Fortunately some of those personal growth and development seminars I had taken kicked in and I started moving again.  I remember a job interview where my future employer asked if I knew a certain software program.  My answer - I don’t today, I will by Monday.  I got the job. 

From typist to technical writer (I learned what I was typing), to technical trainer (I taught some college courses when I was a vet, so it wasn’t a hard transition), to network engineer (I learned what I was writing about) to programmer (in the 90’s if you knew that Java wasn’t just coffee, and could say UNIX, you had a job), to system engineer, to solution architect.  Back to those personal development courses, I designed my career to be exactly what I wanted.  I was working for a telecommunications company and in 2001, the industry was struggling.  My job was requiring significant travel with the potential for being relocated and my dad was in Florida with some significant health issues.  I decided to change jobs in the worst job market in that industry, and found the perfect position, right in Lake Mary Florida.  (Laws of attraction, power of positive thinking, taking action, be, do, have - Again, all of the things I learned really do apply to life).

The hardest thing about Florida was maintaining my level of fitness.  For the first time in my life I was working in an office.  Before my average day required walking several miles, and significant physical activity, even before I counted the workouts.  I could eat essentially what I wanted, when I wanted (given the rules I set out 15 years ago).  I did find a group of people who played volleyball on Sundays - that became my main physical activity, and also gave my the closest friends I ever had in my life.  I still rode my bike, did some hiking, skiing, walking, but not at the same level that I had in New England.  Somehow my weight stabilized at about 145 to 150 - (about 15 to 20 pounds heavier than my extreme riding weight 10 years earlier - but a healthy weight).  Then I had an international assignment in the middle east (Qatar).  That’s when the weight started creeping up.  Lots of travel, restaurants, no workouts, minimal activities included in my lifestyle.  I had to buy new clothes, but just rationalized that the brand I was buying was “just cut a little small so I need a bigger size”.  ACK!!!!!

Reality check # whatever (After 50, you have so many reality checks you don’t keep track) .  I knew what I had to do. 

1. Nothing was forbidden - I could eat anything I wanted, as much as I wanted, but only when I wanted it.
2. I would only eat when I was hungry
3. I would cut back, just a little. 

I also joined the local gym in Lake Mary and found Scott. 

At least this time I caught myself with only about 25 pounds to lose and now, I’ve made a commitment to a lifetime of health and fitness.

Part 5 - California Dreaming

So get back on track, take a step, repeat, and be careful what you project to the universe.  Things happen very fast.  My dad passed away at Christmas 2003 (I’m so grateful for having kept him in my life while I had the opportunity).  I got back on track with diet, health and fitness in January 2004, I reconnected with my college sweetheart in the spring, and moved to California to see if things would work out between us.  So my friends thought it was an extreme move, but why not. 

1.  You will never know if you don’t try. 
2.  If it doesn’t work out, I’m be single in California instead of single in Florida - not a bad trade

I did have a great advantage since my company has a SF office and let me transfer, but finding a new job would only have delayed the inevitable. 

So the college sweetheart and I didn’t work out.  I’m single in California, I discovered Sea Kayaking and I’m doing that with as much passion as I’ve done all the other activities in my life, and loving every minute.  I still keep and cherish my friends in Florida, I’m making new friends in California (and in MTM land wherever you physically reside) - life is just a series of new discoveries.  So this is the end of my history, but the beginning of the rest of my life. 

Hope to see you in it.