Being Brave

I am a big consumer of reality television and one of my favorite/most inspiring shows out there is the Biggest Loser.  These people are attempting to change their lives, they put everything else in their life on hold to attempt to change everything, forever.  One of my favorite teams in Season 11 was the purple team.  The sister team of Hannah and Olivia were there for each other through every challenge and I think they were one of the few teams to never really have a bad week--yes they had not great weeks but they were consistently losing throughout the 20+ weeks.  In the end, Hannah and Olivia were the final two going into the final weigh-in.  They both lost nearly half of their body weight with Olivia winning the show losing 49% of her body weight.  These two are so inspiring to me because I really relate to them they are young women who have never known what it is like to be "skinny" and healthy.  Hannah said several times on the show that the bravest thing that she did was reach out for help and talk about where she was in her life and her journey.  So I am going to try to do that--writing it all down is not hard, I have done that for years in my 100s of journals, putting it out there on the interwebs for the world to read is less than comforting, but here goes...

The first time I remember being overweight was in the 5th grade.

This is me at my birthday party in the 5th grade.  I cannot remember a time after this that I felt good about myself.  In the 7th grade we had a weigh in during gym class and while all my other classmates were barely breaking 100 pounds, I weighed in at 150.  I was always the biggest skater in every competition I entered, and always the biggest on any team I was ever on.  I have always seen myself as the "fat friend" when all around me my friends are going out and getting dates I sit at home and feel sorry for myself.  There are a few notable exceptions to this rule but for the most part that is how it's been.  Now I am 26 years old, college and law school graduate, starting my first real job tomorrow and still can't feel proud of myself for any of these accomplishments.  I know that my self worth should not be shrouded in what I look like and it isn't.  The feelings about how I look just permeate every aspect of my life.  

With all that said, I have decided to make a change starting tomorrow I am going on my own journey.  I want to lose half of my body weight in one year.  It works out to be about 11 pounds per month for 12 months.  I want to do this for myself and for a new life that I want for myself.

I made a few things to help me out:

This is my vision board all the things that I want for my life and some inspirations thrown in for good measure.  I really want to run a half and a full marathon so that is what those numbers are on the side, its the back ground on my computer...

And these are my purple fingernails to remind me of Team Purple from the Biggest Loser and a daily reminder to stay on track!

Alright, blog readers (are there any?) there it is my life and journey out there for all to see...