Back in skinny jeans

Inspiring Fit Week: Blogging helps Israel say bye-bye to 44lbs on his way to dropping 100+

Blog: Fat Man Unleashed
Tracking: Israel
Niche: 100+ pounds to drop
Health goal: To get control of my eating and be 230 lbs and bench 2 plates (225 lbs) for 20 reps.
Israel's story:

Growing up in a Latino family in a bad part of New York City, I always ate. I would eat tons of fried food, rice, and junk food. I was not very active as a kid either. I would come home from school and plop down in front of the television to watch my cartoons. Then I would spend hours playing video games. That all changed when I started high school. I haven’t weighed under 200 lbs since junior high school.

Having played sports in high school, I was able to shed the fat I had accumulated during my child hood rather easily. I would be able to eat anything and all I had to do was workout and play football. It never occurred to me that if I stopped exercising that I would balloon into a behemoth of a man. And here's why the weight piled on...

Inspiring Fit Week: Lisa wants to shed her pregnancy weight

Blog: Workout Mommy
Tracking: Lisa
Niche: Moms & Dads
Health goal: To lose the pregnancy weight and get back into shape
Lisa's story:

In my life before kids, I was a personal fitness trainer and group fitness instructor.  I ran marathons and was in excellent shape.  I had the freedom to exercise for hours everyday and did not realize how drastically that would change once I had children!   

Now that I'm a stay at home mom to two young kids, it is a struggle to find that time for me and making time for myself to stay fit. Between feedings, play dates, and mountains of laundry I am often overwhelmed and too exhausted to exercise. It’s a challenge, I won’t lie to you.

But, I am committed to getting back in shape so I did something new…

Inspiring Fit Week: Comrade GoGo wants to shed 1/3 her body weight

Blog: Comrade GoGo
Tracking: Comrade GoGo
Niche: 50+ lbs to Drop. Using Weight Watchers
Health goal: Drop 65 pounds
Comrade GoGo's story:

When I graduated from college in 1999, the first thing I did was move to New York City. For the next two years I was thin, but not for healthy reasons; I was broke and didn't eat well, and I took up a self-destructive way of life, pretending I'd found freedom when inside me there existed a bottomless craving.

Eventually I broke away from that lifestyle when I discovered a new kind of excess in training for a marathon. Although I attained a fit body, my mind was reeling as I tried to get a handle on the sickening lurch of 9/11, the disastrous end of a relationship, and the debt that I'd accrued. Life became a bit challenging and my weight rose...

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Inspiring Fit Week: Leslie helps us have a more positive body image on iVillage

Blog: The Weighting Game
Tracking: Leslie
Niche: Positive body image
Health goal: To fully banish my body image struggles and reach a healthy point where I love my body and don't let some cellulite surpass my fabulousness.
Leslie's story:

I am a Chicago-based health writer, specializing in women's issues. Hopefully you’ve read my stuff on iVillage at The Weighting Game, or my book Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth About Women, Body Image, and Re-Imagining the "Perfect" Body. In my writings, I also use my own stories of body image struggle as a springboard.

As an author, I spent five years observing and talking with women of all sizes, ages and ethnic backgrounds about their body image, from preschoolers who are already refusing their teacher’s juice and cookies because they’re “on a diet” (boo) to a 92-year-old yoga instructor who was SO confident in her inner beauty that she had no qualms about disrobing in a bookstore (yay!) I look to help women leave the lows of body-esteem behind.  

Besides writing about diet and fitness at iVillage, you can find me writing about other complimentary topics in other familiar places...
 

Inspiring Fit Week: Allison shares with us her healing experience with binge eating

Blog: Path To Health
Tracking: Allison
Niche: To be healthy at every size I am
Health goal: To be as healthy as I possibly can be; physically and mentally.
Allison's story:

I realized I was bigger than everyone else when I was seven, at eight (and every year after that) I wrote in my journal that I needed to go on a diet so that I could be skinny. I don’t remember writing that in my eight year old journal, but really, no eight year old should have to feel like that.

At nine my parents separated, and I turned to food for comfort, although I didn’t realize I was using it as a coping mechanism at the time. That was pretty much the start of my binge eating. When my mind told my mouth that it wanted to eat something…my entire being became focused on stuffing my face. I couldn't stop...

Inspiring Fit Week: Katiebird sheds pounds to get off medication for Diabetes

Blog: Eat4Today
Tracking: Katiebird
Niche: Online support group focusing on health as affected by food, eating, and exercise.
Health goal: To lose enough weight so I don't have to take medication for Diabetes.
Katiebird's story:

Eat4Today was inspired by a lifestyle change I made 2-1/2 years ago. At the time I was struggling with the side effects resulting from obesity.  My stomach was constantly upset and I had pretty-much uncontrolled diabetes.

In angst, I had even been thinking about how frustrating it was that I couldn't just give up eating. I never had any trouble quitting smoking – but, you can't solve food issues quite that easily. I knew I could go back to Weight Watcher's and lose weight at a pretty reasonable rate. But then what? Does anyone keep weight off once they stop going to meetings? I certainly never have, and so I looked for other solutions and found one online…

Inspiring Fit Week: JoLynn wants to drop 30 lbs and learns the pitfalls of processed foods

Blog: The Fit Shack
Tracking: JoLynn
Niche: Holistic view of creating a healthy body. Using the 6 Week Body Makeover
Health goal: Drop 30 lbs + increase physical strength and cardio fitness
JoLynn's story:

I can remember thinking I was fat when I was a kid but I wasn't. I was not overweight until my first year of college, and ever since then I've had an issue with food and my weight. At one time, I was obsessed with food and weighing myself until I got to a point where I said I would never diet again.

I decided I would eat what I wanted to, eat only when hungry, and stop when I was full. I worked out on my treadmill an hour each day which felt good, but I didn't lose weight; I maintained a 10 lb range. Then I tried one diet, and lost weight through stress.

In 2004, I had a job that I didn't like where we had regular "food days". I ate often and existed on processed and fast food - plenty of sugar, high sodium content, frozen dinners, cheese, and soda. This got me to my top weight of 171.5, a sizeable amount on my 5'4.5" petite frame. I needed to make a change…

Inspiring Fit Week: Charlotte found emotional and physical healing through running & a confident kick

Blog: The Great Fitness Experiment 
Tracking: Charlotte
Niche: Fitness for FUN & healing. Weight loss is incidental.
Health goal: To live a healthy life full of joy and help others find the same. One specific goal is to climb a 5.11 rock wall:)
Charlotte's story:

It started with running, as in running away emotionally. Five years previous I had been sexually assaulted and between the nighttime panic attacks and the daytime nausea-inducing rounds of guilt roulette, I simply couldn't run fast or far enough to escape my nightmares.  To make matters worse (better?), my attacker had finally been arrested after assaulting several other women and I was called to testify in the court case against him.   

During the nine months that the case dragged on, every morning I'd lace up and run as fast as it took to stop my mind from thinking and, for that one hour a day, I was happy.  Running became my escape.  The night I was attacked, I couldn't run away.  But now I could.  And oh how I did!

The running continued even after the court case concluded (he plea-bargained to one year in prison).  Never much of an athlete, that was my introduction into the many benefits of exercise.  I loved the runner's high and the new muscles in my legs.  But it wasn't enough...