When I was younger I always hated my body, I had  mousy blonde hair and freckles and I was  pretty short (I am still only 5 foot 1).  I always thought I had these HUGE giant legs.. It's funny how we see our selves, especially in our youth.. In reality I  weighed maybe 100 lbs my whole  teen years.   I'm not sure what I saw, but it wasn't what every one else saw.. I always wished for longer leaner legs and and to be slim.. I remember a boy in 10th grade telling me I was fat and I had thunder thighs.. and I believed him. Really he was just mad because I constantly  refused to be his girlfriend.. As insecure as I was about my self, I was at least  smart enough to know, you don't date the guy who  calls you names to get his way, (or hits and hurts for that matter).

I never had the direct thought, I need to EAT less or to starve my self, but it is kind of funny how without ever making that decision , I did it any ways.   I was SO the teen girl  who for  3 days may eat  only a granola bar and maybe drink some tea, and I might push some salad around on my plate, or eat a few bites of chicken,  and then    I may binge eat a bag of chips with friends on a weekend.   I never really THOUGHT, this was wrong.. I thought I eat, I totally eat...I ate chips, a whole bag of them   just the other day...forget the fact that I had hardly eaten the rest of the week.. I never saw it as a problem.. I had a friend at the time suffering from bulimia, and she was pretty open about it and I was the one that sat in the hospital with her while she had essential vitamins pumped back into her body, I talked to her on the phone when she was at a rehab center for  her disorder, and then  talked her through things over and over again, as she weighed 85 lbs (she was the same height as me by the way). Whats funny in all those years I NEVER noticed what I was doing to my self and my body was  pretty much the same thing  just a different version of it..

When I moved out on my own and was responsible for my own  food and groceries.. I'm not sure if I was better or worse.  Maybe a little bit of both at times..  I would wake up and have my tea in the am, I may eat a bagel or soup  or nothing at all and then  after finishing my 8 hour school  day (which was basically a work day because as a hair student you are working all day for FREE), I would hop the bus to the mall where I worked until 9 and  most definitely would NOT eat anything,unless my boss bought pizza as a treat for good sales.   As I sit here writing this,  I can almost smell the pizza and feel the guilt I felt as I picked at it, and yet at the time picking at the pizza here and there was so normal  to me,  the guilt and that combined still never registered as anything more than just a small appetite to me. Its funny how I could force my self to ignore that guilt as a warning sign  and allow it to aid in continuing to eat like a "bird" as people would say.  Typically then I would get home close to  10:30 midnight, I was pretty much USELESS at locking up the store. I hated  my close nights. The  mall doors on the shops had these bolts you had to get JUST so and  it involved reaching around and    trying with all your might.. It was such a known pain in the ass (excuse the language) that  the other girls said  if you cant get it  go back and count cash and then try again  you will only frustrate your self if you don't take a break.. So because  I was done at 9pm I almost ALWAYS missed the 915pm bus which meant I wasn't probably going to get the bus  at 9:30pm either which meant   the 9:45pm bus and even then if the door was particularly funny that night It may even be the 10pm bus. Then right home to bed..

Shortly after I started working and going to school, I ended up with a roommate.. I wont say much about her other than I'm happy to have never had to have another female roommate ever again.  She was a big source of stress for me both at home and at school.  I'm a bit of a door mat, and it took me a long time to find my voice (and even still have troubles with it some times).  Around this time I started with these random dizzy spells, but they were accompanied by nausea  and anxiousness. I actually wondered if they were panic attacks for a while..   But it was strange the only  time I would get them would be when I had gone FOREVER without eating much and then the first thing I would grab would be a bagel or a large  bread like wrap or pita or a pasta dish...  Usually stuff I ate when I was out with my then partner or parents..  I remember  having to leave stores and go sit outside and wait for it to pass..   Not long after this I moved  to a city  a few hours away and the dizzy spells  along with the bad eating habits

were not any better. I never actually stepped on the scale in those days, and I never really believed it at the time but looking at photos i was  likely under 100 lbs.. If you've ever heard that  saying "what are you? 100lbs soaking wet" I actually thought being that size or under was ok for my height.. As the year progressed It became obvious that it was my sugars dipping low and not anxiety that was causing the dizzy spells..  Some days I would want to spend hours in bed I just had no energy to do anything.  

Some where in there I ended my relationship with my then  partner and  found my now husband..  And ultimately  that's what pulled me out of my disorder.. I ended up pregnant!  It wasn't planned and I couldn't figure out why I was gaining weight my  now husband and I at the time were  at the gym every night, I had NEVER gone to the gym this much, why was I gaining weight?  Then I found out I was pregnant and the morning sickness kicked in, and I tried to continue to eat the way I always had before and it was almost like the tiny baby inside of me was saying "no mommy I need food too!."   I know that's cheesy but I began to realize that the ONLY way the  morning (or all day) sickness would go away was to eat  every  couple hours, if I didn't eat I was dying.  I then ended up  in the dietitians office with gestational diabetes and in explaining to the dietitian what I would have NORMALLY eaten like and her then telling me, ya you don't eat properly, I was like OH, ok...I don't? Then almost a year after that I read "Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi, and My eyes opened up.  That was me (aside from the purging I never did that). I didn't starve my self 100 percent like  what you think an anorexic is, and I didn't throw up like a bulimic, but I restricted EVERYTHING I ate. 

So the good news was that  once I started eating while pregnant, I developed a taste for all kinds of yummy  gross stuff. I had actually NEVER had a whopper hamburger and could maybe count the times I ate fast food in my life on one hand prior.  The BAD news was with this new found LOVE for food.. I still really had NO IDEA how to eat.   I'll cut this short but I basically spent   5 years struggling with my weight. was I  largely obese , no but I weighed the same not pregnant as I did pregnant... and because of the types of food I was eating it was fat. Pure and simple.  Especially in the tummy, and the arms and the face.... When you eat processed or  greasy foods it gives you this puffy bloat.. You  don't recognize your self in the mirror or in photos. 

 I tried after my  youngest to loose weight I think he was maybe a year and a bit old.. My friend and I were in the gym every night  busting our butts counting our calories  the whole 1200 a day  we allotted our selves... and I did  see change and I did see progress. I'm not saying I didn't it just took me  8 to 12 months to HIT those goals.. I did get to my goal weight for 10.5 seconds.. it was exciting and then I hovered.. Then I started to slowly gain I spent about a year going up and down 4 lbs  ( 4 lbs is a lot on a short person). Then  my dog died suddenly and the 4 lbs I planned to lose in the summer turned into the 10 lbs I gained.. I was back at my pregnancy weight and there was a chance it was going to keep going. I FINALLY said OK enough is enough I'm contacting my now coach Nicole and I'm going to cave, and ask about the beachbody, shakeology and 21 day fix thing. A lot of other people had been having success with it, i figured if ever a time to try it it was now. So I did and I lost 4 lbs in 1 week...  I'm  Finished TODAY my 3rd round of 21 day fix and I'm down 15 lbs as of right now I weight in tomorrow it could be more.. I'm shocked 3 rounds x 21 days 63 days people.   That's  2 months and a day! Did you read the part where it took me 8 - 12 months last time?

So  there was a lesson here,  in among ALL that   story telling.  In all the years of being thin, in the years of being  chubby, and even in the years I spent counting calories and being some what fit , I NEVER had the BALANCE. I have  gained/learned from the 21 day fix.I never had the  realization that my body needs to be fueled properly to perform properly. So NOW I'm on this journey  to be fit for me, healthy for me,   which means the activity I do and the  food that  gets prepared and eaten in this house. But also for my 3 kids.. I had this moment of clarity, when I was trying new foods that I want my kids to remember me cooking and trying new things, Healthy things. I want to redefine  "treat" in my house. I want to  help others reach their goals.. On a daily basis.  With my job as a hair stylist I make people feel good. I listen to them and I make them pretty... I have now my self become a beachbody coach and want to do the same thing I do for my hair clients , for the people who choose me as a coach. I change lives on the outside already ,  I want to start to do that with the inside as well.. I've learned  in this journey that the way to  do this starts with the change on the inside, like what we put IN our insides.  

So That's just a little bit about me.   I'm going to be talking to you all about lifestyle, and family and fitness, and running (I'm an avid runner). Its all going to be right here , I'm going to try to post some recipes I've   come up with along the way. Some tips and tricks on  how to prep your food as well as a few reviews  of my  experiences with  the runs I've done  in the past and will do in the future.. and then   some of the beachbody programs.. If ANYTHING  about beachbody interests you please contact me. I'm here!

xoxo

Samantha