Amber's 120 Pound Weight Loss

I have an amazing weight loss story for you today, Amber is truly an inspiration!! I may have cried reading this story so you've been warned :) Happy Happy Birthday Amber, I hope you have one amazing day! 

Hey y'all! My name is Amber and I have a little ol' blog over at Crafty Healthy Mommy. Today is my birthday and SkinnyMeg is giving me the best gift ever (except for the year my husband proposed on my birthday. Hello...diamonds! Oh and love and stuff...) by having me guest post today! I am so incredibly honored and excited to be here!

Like you all, I admire SkinnyMeg so much. She inspires me daily with her dedication & positivity. She makes me WANT to go to the gym, and I'm a lazy bum, so that's some serious inspiration! Also, she's freaking adorable and hilarious. We're totes BFFs in my head. Nope...can't say totes. Anyway, I relate to her in so many ways and I can not thank her enough for the opportunity to share my weight-loss story with y'all. Really, I owe you something mint and chevron, Megan!

A bit about me: I'm a semi-crafty mom of twins working hard to achieve my goal weight of 143 to be half the weight I once was. I was born and raised in Sweet Home Alabama; where everything is sweet/fried/supersized. How people stay thin in the South is a mystery to me!

I've struggled with weight issues the majority of my life. I finally had enough after the birth of my twins and decided to do something about it...for real this time. You see, this wasn't my first time trying to lose weight. I'd say I've dieted off and on since I was 16 or so. I tried Weight Watchers, Atkins, SparkPeople, diet pills galore, and I even tried Nutrisystem, y'all. I lost some weight with a few of those, but I always quit and always gained that weight back plus some. Something was just different this time, and I'm so glad! I'd like to say I'm doing this purely for my health, but I'm going to be really honest...I want to be in single digit sized jeans so badly! Don't get me wrong though, the health aspect is a definite bonus and I'm feeling better than ever!


My whole long story--

I was an average kid, a chunky teen, and a fat adult. It's like I just never stopped growing. Once I hit my adult height of 5'7", I continued to grow...out! I could blame it on genetics, but let's be real...I love food and I'm lazy.

I met my husband "B" when I was 19 and probably weighed around 180 lbs. I'd just finished a bout with low carb and had lost about 40 lbs. I was a size 14 and feeling pretty good about myself. We dated, I moved in, we fell in love, and I fattened up along the way! We got married 2 years after we started dating. My dress was a size 20 and had to be let out quite a bit before the big day. You would think that fitting into a thousand dollar dress on my wedding day would have motivated me to lose some weight. Sadly it didn't.

So I'm a new bride at nearly 22 years old and my size matches my age. Thank God I didn't keep up that trend! We decided we wanted to have a baby right away. I went off the pill 2 months after we got married and.......nothing. I suffer from Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) symptoms that caused infertility. I had to see a Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE) in order to get pregnant and at my first visit, just like every other doctor, they weighed me. I saw a big ol' 286 flash on that scale and almost fell off! I had no idea how much I weighed until then. I knew I was big, but I had no idea that I was knocking on 300's door (that's still really painful to say). With every appointment, I hear "losing weight will only help..." So of course that motivated me to lose the weight, right? Nope. Over a year after starting with the RE, I'm still not pregnant and I'm still fat...maybe fatter. It's taking more and more medication to get my body to respond and we're getting to the point of needing to take a break from treatments. This is now two years from when we started "trying". I'm desperate. I ask my RE if there's anything we can do to help my weight loss ("losing weight will only help..." remember?) So he prescribes me Phentermine and suggests I look into a more permanent solution for my weight.

Around my highest weight of 286

Another picture around 286

I lost almost 30 lbs taking the Phentermine and scheduled an appointment for a consultation for the LapBand. At that consultation, I'm told that I am a great candidate for the surgery and that it should be fully covered by my insurance. Um...yay? Heck no. I walked out of that office and had a full-on emotional breakdown in my car. I can't have surgery to lose weight!! I was freaking out. This is just not the option for me. So I never even went back for my second consultation. Good thing I didn't go that route, because we ended up finally getting pregnant on what would have been my last medicated cycle before we took a "break". We were ecstatic! We go for my first ultrasound around 6 weeks and find out it's twins! I had a very healthy twin pregnancy, gained about 20 lbs, and delivered my sweet little boy and girl at 35 weeks and 6 days. They were tiny, but healthy and we all went home together 3 days later.

Skip ahead about 3 months and I see a picture of a friend on Facebook. She'd lost weight and was looking fantastic and so happy!! I was so motivated by her progress that I decided I was finally going to do it. Getting married didn't motivate me to lose weight, a 2 year battle with infertility didn't do it, but a picture of someone on Facebook did?? I'm just as confused about that as I'm sure you are, but I'm just glad that something finally made me do it.

195ish

3 months postpartum. Around 257 lbs

I started using MyFitnessPal (MFP) on June 1, 2011 and never looked back. This is just good old fashioned counting calories and working out. Who knew it could be so simple? Apparently not me. I started MFP at 257 lbs and set a goal of 60 lbs to get under 200 for the first time in a long time. I reached that goal in January of 2012 and reevaluated. I played around with the BMI chart to try to find a healthy goal for my height. I thought, "how cool would it be to be half of my highest weight??" Turns out 143 is right in the middle of the "healthy" range for my height. Perfect!



To date, I've lost over 90 lbs since starting MFP and over 120 lbs from my highest weight. I've gone from a size 24 to a 10 (I can't wait to be in an 8!) I only have 20 lbs to go, but boy is this last 20 lbs hard!

Should have left those horizontal stripes alone!

I'm way more active than I've ever been in my whole life and I eat better (most days) than ever. I go to the gym three days a week where I participate in a Body Pump style class and also a spin class. SkinnyMeg actually motivated me to take spin. I'd tried it before, but never made it through a whole class. After I started following Megan, I decided to give it another shot and now I love it! Well...I love the calorie burn. I'm also trying to take up running again. I completed a C25k program last year, but I really hated running. I'm doing that same program again this year and I guess I'm hoping to magically fall in love with it this go around? We'll see.

Though I've lost all this weight, I'm human and I still fall victim to temptations. I struggle with eating out, sweets, and mindless snacking. I haven't made it through this journey without screwing up; I just never gave up! When I have a bad week day, I pick it back up the next day and keep moving forward. The important thing is never giving up.

Tried on my wedding dress on our 5th anniversary

My goals (other than that size 8) are to be healthy for my husband and my babies, to learn to love myself, and to inspire others. I hate the saying "if I can do it, anyone can do it". Your weight loss journey will likely be very different than mine. We are all facing different things in our lives, but I do believe that anyone can do it when they set their mind to it!

May 2011 on the left and just last Saturday on the right

Thank you for taking the time to read my (too long) story and thank you SO much to SkinnyMeg for having me here.