Transformation Tuesday - Meet Dacia

Happy Transformation Tuesday!  I am SUPER excited to share Dacia's story with you today.  I even had the pleasure of meeting her last year at FitBloggin!  She is AWESOME! So, I am going to stop typing and share her story!

Hello everyone! I am excited to be a part of Kari’s weekly feature. I am pretty sure this is the first time I have ever been asked to participate in something like this J

My name is Dacia, I am 37 years old and I started blogging four years ago as a way to help keep me accountable on my weight loss journey. When I started out back in 2011 I weighed 286 pounds. I cannot tell you with absolute certainty that this was my highest weight because I hadn’t owned a scale prior to that point, so really it could have been higher.  Through blogging and social media I developed a support group that helped me grow and change and find friends and role models that inspired and motivated me. Although I have lost and maintained (for almost 3 years) the excess weight I carried, so much more than just the weight loss occurred throughout my journey.

I had hit my personal rock bottom and knew in that moment that if I didn’t change I was just going to continue to gain, to continue to get sicker, and basically throw away my life. I didn’t want that. More than anything else, I didn’t want that to happen. But I didn’t know where to start. Ok, maybe I knew where to start but I didn’t know how to make it stick. You see, I had been to this place before- that point of frustration with my weight and determination to make big changes but nothing before had ever worked. This time around someone told me, in not the nicest way, that I lacked the accountability to ever make a difference in my life and that was it…my ah-ha moment that helped move me forward. I knew this time around I needed some accountability. No one could make me eat a certain way or make me exercise other than me- and before this realization I think I always expected someone else to do the pushing, someone else to make me do things. But we all know that’s not how life works. No one can make me do something I don’t want to do. I needed to learn how hold myself accountable and that was my starting point.

Throughout the past four years I have made sooooooo many changes. Some of those changes I changed and changed again. To me, though, I think that is the way it should be. Always continuing to tweak and change your routine to fit into an ever-changing life. Early on, I joined Weight Watchers and that provided me with the basic tools I really needed to help get me on the right track. Prior to that point I didn’t understand portion control or tracking. The word moderation meant nothing to me. WW helped me create a good foundation. From there, after I had lost about 60 pounds or so, I started to take a more personal approach to help determine what types of foods would help support my lifestyle. I began to learn more about nutrition and the importance of different macro and micro nutrients. I changed from someone that relied on convenience and processed foods to someone that packed their lunch every day and created weekly menus based around eating primarily whole foods. On the activity front I was also changing. I went from a completely sedentary lifestyle to walking a few times a week, then riding the recumbent bike, then some weight machines at the gym, then yoga, boxing, Nia, pilates, Tai Chi, QiGong, Zumba, Boot Camp (I really love group fitness classes- can’t you tell), then cycling, and then after I had lost 110 pounds I started running. Once I was maintaining, I trained for and completed my first triathlon. Everything in my life on this journey was a progression. From reducing my soda intake, to cutting it out completely, to drinking primarily water (and of course beer on the weekends). From eating without control or consideration to eating with a purpose- this took at least a solid 6 or 8 months just to get to that point, and I still tweak my diet pretty regularly. My activity was the same way. I was wycwyc’ing before there was a popular phrase for it. I started out with what I could do and maintained and slowly progressed to doing more and doing other things.

My life today is so different than what it was in the beginning. Recently I wrote a post that goes into detail about that transformation so I won’t go into too much depth here (I am already taking up so much of Kari’s space) but all I can say is I wouldn’t recognize the person I was four years ago if she walked by me on the street, and it is not just because of the obvious physical changes although they are quite noticeable.  Four years ago I couldn’t comfortably walk up a flight of stairs, an entire medium pizza would have been dinner, I spent hour after hour in front of a TV, and I had no energy, I was sick all the time.  Life was very hard four years ago. It was a struggle, mentally and physically, just getting out of bed. Now I have a new perspective, something I needed to find in order to be successful, and here I am about to run my 7^th half marathon, I eat more whole foods than most people would ever think possible (my salads fill up our largest mixing bowl), I have boundless energy and I sleep like a baby. I can do more today than I ever dreamed possible. And that feeling, the feeling of hopefulness mixed with excitement, is the best feeling to wake up to every day.

Being someone who has been able to lose and maintain a substantial amount of weight often opens me up to a lot of questions about how to do it or what worked. My advice, and I say this often, is to find what works for YOU. If what you are doing is making you miserable you will not be able to sustain those behaviors for very long. If you hate running, don’t run. If you hate eating celery, don’t eat celery. If you hate only getting 5 hours of sleep every night, get more sleep. I know that seems like ‘easier said than done’ advice but it is the truth. The whole ‘it’s a lifestyle change’ is the truth. There is no finish line, you don’t just workout for four hours a day and only eat salads, lose a bunch of weight, and then stop. That’s how people regain. It is about finding sustainable healthy habits that you can happily continue on with for the rest of your life. For me, I abide by the 80/20 rule (because I am just not Type A enough to live any other way) and make sure that 80% of my meals come from whole foods. I meal plan. I bring my lunch to work. I eat to fuel my body for activity and recovery. But that 20% allows me for dinners out with friends, a beer or two at happy hour, a cupcake. That 80/20 is my moderation. I don’t deprive myself of anything but I also know that the more crap I put in my body the crappier I will feel. And I deserve better. I encourage you to find what works for you, it’s a learning process and this will continually change and morph with you. But if you are not happy (truly happy, not just surface happiness) doing what you are doing today then you won’t be happy tomorrow or a week from now or a month from now. Period. And that happiness is what you will need to make your lifestyle sustainable. 

Wow, just wow!  Not much more I need to add to that!  She is simply amazing and I am so inspired by her blog and I love following her on Facebook.  I will list the links below so you can check her out as well!  Thanks you Dacia for sharing with us today!

http://myrootstogrow.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/MyRootsToGrow

I am still on the search for more stories to share for Transformation Tuesday! If you would like a chance to tell your story, click here to fill out the form. I LOVE seeing all of the inspiration and we have to lift each other up! We are all in this together!

Sending you all love and healthy wishes!!!

Keep Losing,

Kari