Part 2: The year of MAJOR changes

I was officially on FIRE after my first year back to being healthy and in shape. I was very conscious about what I ate, what I drank, how I worked out, my cardio, I left nothing out. And several more months later in July '06I took what I felt were HOT pictures considering there I'd come from 17months earlier. I mean I was looking like something and somebody for a change. I had a shape to my legs, my waist was slimming down and I started having definition in my arms. BOY WAS I EVER EXCITED. But still I didn't stop here. At this point I was working out DAILY. I was eating AT LEAST 5-6 meals a day which consisted of lean protein, complex carbs and veggies. Of course I'm human I had my cheat days but after several months of operating this way it was almost like a cheat day wasn't really a cheat. And it turned from an entire day to a meal or snacks but compared to where I'd been before my cheats weren't that bad. I came from a place where I ate Oreo's, drank Pepsi, ate entire Totino's pizza's for lunch, made things for dinner like Hamburger Helper and anything else starchy that was HIGH in carbs and FAT!! By the way I HATE Oreo's & Pepsi but I ate and drank them because they were in the house - so here's your FIRST step. . . eliminate these items from your grocery list thus eliminating them from YOUR HOUSE!! If you don't have these items in your house and you have a craving for them that means you have to get up get dresses and go get them. Having to put forth so much effort at random times of day and night will make you think twice about eating such unhealthy items. In order to clean our bodies up on the outside we have to start with the inside and that starts with what we put in our mouths. Now this may not be for everyone but I also eliminated cheese & milk from my diet and obtained my calcium from alternate sources one of which being VITAMINS.

Now at this point I am a full fledged full steam ahead BUFFMOTHER. I'm blogging on a daily basis and receiving all kinds of healthy tips and information from women who had now become my friends. My workouts were going great and the changes were happening in a way I had never expected. Needless to say some Life situations kept me from competing but the dream to walk across that stage never left my heart. October 2006 I felt it was time to take one more picture to see where I was and I was floored. Especially when I compared them to my starting point. In 20months I had completely changed my LIFE by changing my habits and my behavior and it paid off in an astronomical way!!

 Those 20 months were the foundation of it all. They were the beginning hard months that taught me a lesson about myself and about my will power over my cravings and my mind. The journey of weight loss is not an easy journey and if it was everyone would be doing it and loosing weight at the drop of a dime, but they're not. It takes MOTIVATION, DEDICATION, DETERMINATION, KNOWLEDGE AND SUPPORT to achieve your goal of weight loss and I'm here to provide you all of that and MORE!!! I'm going to bid farewell right now and go workout myself but when I come back we will finish this story and move into the nitty gritty with Part 3: Let's Get Real & Get Right!! How I got to where I am today and how I will get to where I belong in the future.
Love Ya, KQ

Here's my first entry. . Part 1: The beginning of a WONDERFUL Journey

So I'll share a little bit about myself. I'm a 32 year old mother of 1 beautiful daughter named Kyndal. Prior to having kids I was a collegiate athlete where I weighed somewhere between 150 - 160lbs and wore about a size 10 and thought I was in good shape. After college I kept working out consistently for the first year then slowly that began to dwindle but I was still fooling myself and believing  I was in good shape because my stomach was flat and in the mirror I looked good. As the time went by the weight started increasing little by little by little and eventually I weighed in around 180 +. Again I wasn't all that moved by it for some reason, then suddenly I became ill with a terrible stomach virus and lost 25-30lbs in a few weeks and I was back down to 150-155lbs and couldn't have been happier. As you all know that weight eventually came back and it came back with some extra friends and by the time I weighed in at my first prenatal appointment which was only about 6wks into my pregnancy I was 192lbs. I WAS ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED!! I already knew I would gain weight due to the pregnancy which I had no control over and I am starting at 192lbs?!?!? We will fast forward to the end of the pregnancy and I finally weighed in around 245-250lbs WOWOWOW!! A few days after her delivery I weighed in around 230lbs which was just unbelievable to me. I kept hoping the weight would come off with breastfeeding but it didn't come off the way I expected and that was due to the fact that I was totally out of shape at the beginning of the pregnancy and I couldn't expect breastfeeding alone to resolve the problem I had.
Six months after having Kyndal I was watching TV one evening and an infomercial came on for The FIRM. Well orginally being from Columbia, SC I knew all about The FIRM and what a good program they had, so I quickly ordered it because there was no way I was going to the gym looking like this. I couldn't have been happier to receive my little treat in the mail. When it arrived I immediately weighed myself in and  I was still over 200lbs. . . 225lbs to be exact. That was the night when I took these pictures: February 2005. I was completely and utterly DEVASTATED again!! Even looking at them today I am floored and almost to the point of tears thinking back to that day. I didn't even recognize myself! WHO HAD I BECOME? CAN THE REAL KENISHA PLEASE STAND UP?!?! I mean what was seriously going on! It was time to devise a plan and CHANGE THE GAME!
I trained at home for a few months using The Firm and began loosing some weight but I knew I had to kick it up a notch and get back into the gym. At this point I had enough knowledge to know the lifting and cardio would help me get this goal accomplished quicker. In the evenings during this time I was also flooding myself with knowledge and information. I Googled almost everything in creation to find my answers and somehow I stumbled across Michelle Berger AKA "BUFFMOTHER" at the time it was just a Yahoo group but I quickly joined and read posts and information until I was overwhelmed and in tears. Here were other women like me who had children and they were FIT & FABULOUS! I was officially on a mission. That weekend I joined the gym and the journey had now been kicked up a notch.

Needless to say I was slapped in the face with another revelation that I was worse off then I thought fitness wise. I would go LATE at night as to keep from seeing people I knew and ride the bike, train on the elliptical and run on the treadmill and please believe when I tell you I was sucking wind like there was no tomorrow and my legs were on fire as if they were burning from the inside. I had never experienced anything like this in my life. I HONESTLY couldn't do more than 5min on the elliptical before I started huffing like I smoked all the cigarettes ever made in North Carolina. But I didn't quit! I began getting more and more knowledge from Michelle and the other Buffmothers and I started seeing changes. About 5months later I was seeing some progress as displayed the picture to the left from July '05.

Still not acceptable but at least I was starting to have a resemblance of some sort of shape. Don't know what shape that was but hey I had it, LOLOL!! I kept flooding myself with knowledge and learning from Michelle who had turned out to be an absolute GOD Send!! She is the sweetest person I could have even encountered on this journey and she assured me I could make it and I would reach my goals as long as I continued working hard. During this time I experienced a lot of plateaus, so I knew I still needed to turn up the volume but what could  I do. . . . . I decided to do like a lot of my other Buffmother's and COMPETE in a figure competition and really get this ball rolling. This was around October  and I took another picture. Looking back on it I was still looking like a linebacker but at the time I was seeing progress. Unfortunately I'm not 100% sure of my weight at this time but it wasn't where I wanted to be that's all I know.

I began learning more and more about nutrition and the affects healthy eating will play in speeding up my progress and I was HOOKED. I mean I was reading every website, blog, journal, magazine, government nutritional website you name it I read it and I have notebooks, torn out pages, notes to myself and the whole 9 to prove it. I was just becoming a huge sponge and it awakened something in me that I thought was gone and that was my passion for fitness. When I finished high school and entered college I wanted to major in sports fitness but not knowing what I would do with a career like that I went into computers and put that on the back burner. Things began progressing much better and by March 06 I no longer had extreme love handles and honches. I know you're like what in the world are honches LOLOLOL well its another word for saddlebags. So I got brave and put on a 2 piece swimsuit while on vacation. Looking back again a decision slightly gone wrong but hey I'd come a long way BABY in 1yr and 1mo.  At this point I could accept how I was looking that since I had come from 225lbs in my first picture. Unfortunately I can't dig up any pictures from me at my heaviest and that's probably because I was avoiding the cameras for good reason. So we will end part 1 of my journey here and begin with part 2: The Year of Major Change!!