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 7th 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
