My Journey..  Where do I start?  I have always been a “big girl” starting back to about the age of 9 or 10.  Everyone would just say Oh, she is just “BIG BONED”. I struggled with my weight all through high school, then I met my husband, was going to college full time and working part-time putting myself through school.   That’s when I started putting on the weight, I wasn’t eating right, wasn’t exercising and by the time I graduated and started my career I weighed 242 pounds.  That was 23 years ago. 
I have been on every diet under the sun, all with failure.  In March 2002, at the age of 28, I was told I may not ever have children if I don’t get the weight off, on another diet I went, this time on a low carb diet and joined Curves.   Between the diet and the working out, I initially lost 60 pounds in 4 months and BAM I got pregnant with our first child who was born in April 2004, then BAM got pregnant again and in September 2005 we had our 2nd child.  Since then life was just a blur.  I tried getting back on Atkins with failure after failure.  Between raising two infants, working fulltime and commuting 40 minutes to work, I was just a mess.  Not eating right, definitely not working out, next thing I knew I was 335 pounds.
So, in March 2010 I underwent gastric banding aka lap-band surgery, at first I lost 40 pounds and was great, then I started getting very tired and was losing my hair, insurance would no longer cover the care for the lap-band and really no education on how to properly eat, I gained all my weight back.  Was still tired all the time and now I developed complications from the lap-band, I was always sick after every meal and developed a hernia in my abdomen.  So In September 2013, I had all the fluid in my lap band taken out and had hernia repair surgery.  Originally the surgeon wanted to take out the band, but low and behold insurance wouldn’t cover it.  In disbelief, I didn’t know what to do.  Here I was recovering from a very hard hernia surgery, sitting on my ASS eating whatever I wanted, when one night while sitting up flicking through the channels I came across an infomercial that would change my life forever. 
The next morning, I was talking with my husband and mentioned that I saw this infomercial for DDPYOGA; he said yeah that is the program I was telling you about before we have Lap Band surgery.  I remember saying to him, can’t be real, and has to be another gimmick; after all I have tried them all.  He said Diamond Dallas Page is a retired WWE wrestler and I was like and SO, what’s the big deal.  Sorry Dallas, not a big wrestling fan..  He said google Diamond Dallas Page.  He went to work and I went to work on google.  That’s when I came across DDPYOGA.COM and Arthur’s video and story and Stacey Morris’s story and web page.  I was moved, cried and then when hubby got home from work we talked it over and made the decision that ultimately changed our lives.  We ordered DDPYOGA.
That was 01/06/2014.  Now fast forward to June 2016, we just made our 2nd move in 2 years from DE to VA from VA to FL.  The stress of the moves,  I gained almost all my weight back.   Sure did, because I fell back into bad habits and I let those habits just take over being flat out LAZY.  It’s not like I didn’t know what I needed to do day in and day out, I was just LAZY.  Then I got an email from Dallas,  it said Hey Buddy haven’t heard from you in a while, what’s up.  I was like OH SHIT!!!  I found the scale in a box, but by that time I already knew what I was gonna see, all my clothes where not fitting anymore, and I wasn’t blind I saw my reflection in the mirror.  So I sent an email back, told Dallas what had happened, he writes back, I knew when you fell off so did your food, When You’re putting the work in I’m here.  I sent him back an email on 06/30/2016, and completely turned my lifestyle back around.  It wasn’t his words that hit me, it was what he didn’t say.  Since then I have not looked back.  I now do visual food journaling that I send Dallas every single day for accountability.  I even include my workouts.  On 6/30/2016 I weighed in at 298 pounds.  In the 28 weeks since, I have lost 35 pounds.  My journey is going to last a lifetime, there is no start or end date attached to it, will it be hard? Sure will, but it will be so worth it after all when did they say anything would be easy in life.  I have a long way to go, but I am healthy, no medical issues, no medical conditions, nothing that can hinder my vision of OWNING MY LIFE. Our whole family eats like me, we eat REAL food, cooked by me, with input from the family.  Together we create our meals and dishes.  I am not on this journey alone, I am just the leader of my pack.  Families that eat good together, workout together, stick together.  I can’t wait to do updated on the whole family and how we all benefited from DDPYOGA.
And to THINK…..  It all started with a MAN, a man who needed to heal himself in order to fulfill his DREAM.