When I first met my husband I weighed around 190 lbs. This was not a weigh that I was dissatisfied with but now it is something that I would definitely want to decrease.
In 2007 my husband and I had our first child and after I had found myself with 60 extra pounds of weight. After a bit of yo yo dieting we could conceive another child less than 2 years later. I found myself gaining and additional 25 pounds putting me back over where I weighed with after I had my son, leaving me around 265lbs.


Over the course of the next 6 years I tried to diet control my intake and exercise. Exercise is something that I have never been good at. It is something I've never taken to because honestly at no point in my life was I ever an athletic person. This put me in quite a bit but trouble. So about two and a half years ago I bought the DDP yoga system and I attempted it with the dieting for about 6 months before giving up.
Around that time I had a miscarriage and my weight didn't seem to be decreasing. While I had made some changes I wasn't ready to commit to the lifestyle change that had to come with not being big anymore. I hadn't understood that for me to lose the weight and keep it off that I have to make a permanent change. So I gave up.
2 more years went by. In January of 2016 I became very depressed and my life felt like it was in shambles. I was sick of being sick all the time being unhappy with myself feeling like I wasn't beautiful or liking myself. I decided to start counting my calories and give DDP yoga another chance. I also decided to look into a diet plan that would help me control the sick feeling I constantly have for my IBS. I found websites, Pinterest, all sorts of things giving me food tips very much like DDP, but for a low FODMAP diet. In it you cut out pretty much alcohol and anything that would exacerbate the symptoms of IBS or Chrohns, which would be a lot of beans, certain dairy, certain grains, certain meat and I started to change my intake. I counted my calories down and I started to control what I took in. I chose good food, low calories and low fat and got rid of everything else. I stopped drinking and I got pregnant again.

Unfortunately this one was also not meant to be and 3 months into my weight loss in success I lost the baby. I was very depressed again but the yoga helped me. While I could have gave up and regressed into the bigger person lifestyle and ate awful food and drink a bunch of alcohol, I didn't my husband stood by me, my kids were there for me and I kept pushing through the sadness and trying harder.

I kept losing weight. One thing I kept telling myself everyday was that if I could get up and do my yoga it would be okay. So after I took my children to school I would do my yoga figure out my meal plan for the day and go to work in my garden. A few days after my husband and my 10 year wedding anniversary I found out that I was pregnant again. This time I was determined to make the right choices eat healthy and take care of myself so that this baby would grow and I wouldn't lose another one. I continued to lose weight during my pregnancy. 3 months in I was at 202!


I haven’t been that small since around the time I got married! I am due in February to have our third child a little girl. I have gained a healthy 25 pounds during this pregnancy after losing around 65 lbs for the whole duration of my journey. I still count all of my calories and I eat what I should and not just what I want. Some days I don't do the yoga but I love it in the way it makes me feel and I recommend it for anybody.
It is easy to buy a workout video or a workout machine or a yoga mat, even buy certain foods and say I'm going to do this. But it is very hard to stick to no matter what. One thing about weight loss if you were ever a big person it is something you're going to struggle with your whole life. You're going to have to make the good choices you're going to have to turn away from that pie or if you have a piece of the pie you're going to have to avoid eating something else that you might like later today or you're going to have to choose ground turkey instead of ground beef or a salad instead of a burrito. Weight loss journeys are ones that are never over. It is up to us to not give up no matter how hard it seems like it will be.