110kg to 56kg – Melinda’s Story

I’ve taken some time this week to have a chat to Melinda, a 32 year old mother of 3. I wanted to share her story with my readers because she is nothing short of inspirational. Her journey to health has not been easy, nor did she have a lot of support. What she did have was determination and the strength to continue on no matter what was thrown at her.

Melinda went from obese at 110kg, down to a strong 56kg. She still has goals and is constantly seeking to challenge herself further. I am certain her story and experience will show you that anything is possible and that any goal is realistic if you are prepared to be in it for the long haul and make a commitment to your health. Here is Melinda at her heaviest:

My interview with Melinda follows:

What bodyshape did you have as a child/teenager?

I was skinny & bony as a kid, and went on the pill at 17. I started to put on heaps of weight, went from 45kg to 85kg at age 20. I went on fad diets, starvation diets lost weight put it on again. At 24 with exercise & a bad diet due to lack of education on food I went down to 57kg.

What did pregnancy and/or eating habits change about your body?

During my pregnancy I got really depressed, thought I was eating for 10, worked for a company where there was photography studios, they were shooting food, when they were finished with it I got to eat as much of it as I wanted, every day! Packets of chips, cream cakes, hot chips, roast lunches (along with living at Mcdonalds.) I ended up with huge with no neck & strechmark city.

What weight did you get to at your heaviest?

Went from 57kg to 110kg. 3 months into my first pregnancy I was in maternity clothes by 6 months they didn’t have a hope in hell of fitting me & by the end of the pregnancy. I was wearing size 24 clothes. 8 months after the first baby was born I was still wearing size 22 at 105kg

Bra size was a 16DD & that was tight.

What did the weight make you feel like or stop you from doing?

Having this much weight made me feel depressed & suicidal, no confidence, no friends, judged by others. Less of a person like I didn’t mater. I walked into Sports Girl once & the sales girls would not even acknowledge me, they were so rude because they didn’t cater for my size, I walked out in tears I felt about 50 years old not 24.

At one point when my baby was around 11 months I was so close to a nervous breakdown.

I couldn’t do activities with my baby, wouldn’t go swimming had no energy to even go for a family walk it started to create marriage problems because he was embarrassed by my weight, even a marriage counsellor suggested along with my husband that I should lose weight that just really upset me.

Tell me about the decision to change (how, why, when, with what help)

My decision to change came from nasty judgmental comments that still ring in my head to this day (which I can now laugh at those who made them). “You will never lose that weight”,” look how fat she is, hahaha”. I said to myself, stuff these people! and set out to prove a point.

From the time my first baby was 8months old it took me 5 years but I did it. I started off with a personal trainer, dietician, determination & dedication also asking the right people in gyms etc lots of questions along the way.

What food habits did you have to break?

I had to break eating Mcdonalds, hot chips, hamburgers, chocolate & any other crap you can imagine.

What kept you going every day?

Determination & wanting to prove a point to those people with negative comments that I’m better than them!

Did you find it hard or easy overall?

It was a very rocky road lots of highs & lows, lots tears, frustration & anguish. I was ready to chuck in the towel many of times, it was the hardest journey of my life.

What does it feel like now, to be training as an athlete and eating even better than ever?

Now after 3 children, & a huge life style change, eating healthy food & regular exercise  I feel alive & well like Im 20 years old not 32!

It’s unreal I now have more confidence than I have ever had, friends & I’m happier than ever at 56kg & a size 8. Im in much better shape than all the judgemental people who I now seriously laugh at. I’m doing things I never would have imagined possible 8 years ago & with the best trainer that I’ve ever had encouraging me, I’m training to be in the best shape I can possibly be in. I want to be a personal trainer & help other women or men who are in the same situation that I was in because I understand them & know how hard it is. It is possible!

I hope by now you can see that the results you get from what can be a quite a long, challenging journey are well worth it. Melinda will never go back to her old ways, one chat with her and you get the impression she means business! She made a decision one day, and stuck to it. She does miss days of training and does eat chocolate and icecream, but the majority of her days are based on good nutrition and short, intense exercise sessions that continue to give her results. She doesn’t have a trainer coaching her for 5 hours a day like on The Biggest Loser, so yes it did take a little while. If you can understand that and respect that your body took some time to get big and will need more time to reverse the damage you will find it easier to be consistent.

What sets her apart from people who fail to sustain change is that she picks herself back up when she has a bad day, and gets on with things again, rather than spending a week eating herself sick because of one small mistake. Despite having a demanding role as a mother of 3 (her youngest is 18 months) she makes time for exercise (20 mins 6 days a week) and puts the effort into educating herself about new foods and recipes as much as possible. She stopped making excuses and started demanding better respect from herself and everyone around her so she could live again. Get off your chair now, and go bash out a set of push ups, or look up a new healthy recipe. It starts with one small step!

My Crossfit Log and some rambling.

I’ve decided to keep a livejournal crossfit log of all my workouts. I’ve tagged each workout so every time I go to do a new session, I can easily search by tags to get results from any same or similar workout. I’m doing this so I can go to the gym with old times and weights in hand and ensure I have the best chance to smash them!

Finding it very motivating to record everything on my journal. It doesn’t take long to clock up  heaps of sessions and you feel a real sense of pride and achievement scanning back over all the old workouts. It’s great to see in such a short time how much I am improving.

My training goals before Christmas 2009

• To be able to complete one full muscle up
• Increased confidence and weight on olympic lifts
• To run 5km without hating it or stopping (yes, I’m a trainer and I hate running!)
• To  perform Glute-Ham Situps as prescribed in a workout (not as easy as it looks!)

I have some specific training goals that I’ve shared here today. Purpose being, that I wanted to demonstrate the Constant and Never Ending Improvement concept from my perspective. I’ve achieved a lot of goals and do not want to lose weight or tone up anywhere. What I DO want is more strength and to be more capable with a lot of the crossfit workouts and exercises. I see a lot of people give up on training because they can’t cope with getting to a certain fitness level/weight/strength, then being told they need to take it up another notch. They regard it as failing because more is being asked of them. It is quite the opposite! It is SO important, right from the very start of your transformation that you are aware that the expectations must always rise and there is no finish point. Embrace this! It is a positive thing and it will be something you cherish as time goes by. The majority of people get addicted to the improvements and are happy to seek them out infinitely.

So, don’t lose heart if your trainer ups your push ups, or makes you run faster all the time, it just means your body has adapted to the training, and it is no longer training or improving your health if you don’t ask that little bit more. If you don’t have a trainer or coach, be that little voice inside your own head and keep looking for ways to do a harder progression, run a bit faster, lift a bit more weight. Learn to love that aspect of your exercise because it will lead you to a body that is capable of so much more. I hope with a lot of the people I have helped that they one day may feel confident enough that they can then go on and teach others.

Obesity and my fears for YOUR health!

I have a real fear that here in Australia (and also the U.S) that obesity will become the norm. I drove past the local high school last week, and I honestly could only spot 2 girls out of over 80 that were not overweight or obese. Everywhere I go I see people who I regard as obese. It really concerns me, not only because being overweight ruins your self esteem – it ruins your life. Your health risks increase dramatically (diabetes, heart disease, joint problems are just a few), you are more likely to have trouble conceiving children, and your life is shortened. It is all avoidable and it frustrates me so much to see how acceptable it is to be overweight now. I will no doubt offend some people with this post but perhaps it is time we all took a real good look at ourselves and our children and did something about it. We have become so lazy and so spoilt by technology that exercise is not a part of every day life for a lot of people anymore. I honestly don’t give a crap about what people look like, I’m not expecting everyone to look like an elite athlete – it is about what is going on inside that worries me!

If you know someone that doesn’t exercise or play sport – why not offer to go walking with them as a starting point. You can use the walks as a time to suggest meeting up for little circuit workouts or going to a class at the gym together. Get off your butt now and go save a life! You can make time no matter your circumstances. I’m yet to coach a client who I could not help with a slightly re-arranged schedule, kids, shift work or otherwise!

Information you NEED for your health!

For the last two weeks my husband and I have dedicated all of our spare time to educating ourselves on health and wellbeing. This short post is to direct you, my readers to some documentaries and topics so that I regard as essential for your education and self improvement.

I encourage you to watch the following documentaries as urgently as possible. Stick it out and watch them to the end, it is well worth the effort. I’ve learned some mind blowing things that have fuelled my desire to seek out more information. I will gradually include notes here on everything I refer you to as I know everyone doesn’t have time to do what I am doing.

“The Beautiful Truth”

“Healing Cancer from Inside Out” (just as important to watch even if you are not affected by cancer)

“Raw Food for Life – The Ultimate Encyclopedia of the Raw Food Lifestyle

I am concentrating my research on raw food at the moment. Becoming vegan or even just vegetarian was not something I have ever strongly considered until I watched these documentaries. My husband and I are both converting to a vegetarian and eventually vegan diet of predominanately raw food. We feel strongly enough about what we have learnt recently that it is necessary for our current and long term health. Some of my knowledge on nutritional requirements – especially protein intake has been spun around.

If you think about it, it is 2009 and we have spent billions of dollars on health research, drugs, treatments, “health food”, supplements and the like, yet the rates of cancer, heart disease, obesity and other major concerns are rising out of control! People still die after enduring the horrible side effects of treatments and surgeries. These documentaries outline why going back to our natural diet of raw, organic fresh vegetables and fruits is the only effective way of ensuring health and wellbeing. Consider that we are a society that treats symptoms not causes. Diet is THE number one reason why people develop cancer, heart disease, diabetes and become obese. Poisoning our bodies with chemotherapy has not proven to stop cancer in it’s tracks – in fact it often causes patients to have a severe recurrance that takes their life. The treatment and surgeries often leave them a sick, crippled mess, in pain and susceptible to any bug going around. Some of these documentaries show people who have overcome terminal cancer easily via converting to raw food vegan diets and a stack of evidence from studies supporting what they are saying. It is possible to eliminate diabetes simply via diet and people are doing it every day.

I will be posting some articles over the next week or two outlining the main points from these doco’s and also some information I am gathering from further research and undertaking a better diet myself. I’m very grateful for the people who pointed me in the right direction. It feels like a light has gone off in my head. You will need to challenge a lot of what you see in advertising and media with regards to food and nutrition – remember that these industries are BUSINESSES, not volunteers who are educating you out of the goodness of their hearts. It is not in their best interest financially to find cures for cancers, or to teach you that you can easily grow everything you need to eat at home in a 4m x 12m run of garden beds! Keep an open mind, become a critical thinker and educate yourself NOW so you can start enjoying the fantastic enlightenment and buzz of health that changing your eating habits can provide. Don’t be one of the fools who assumes “it won’t happen to me” and cancer or some other serious health concern will never come knocking on your door. It isn’t just about prevention, it is about feeling alive, having motivation day in day out, about your moods being normal. You can make changes with what you eat that will change your skin, your weight, your strength, your sleep, your ability to get pregnant! As mentioned in Raw Food for Life, it is a “Win – Win” !