About Beckie

Hello!

Thanks for visiting my blog!

My name is Beckie. I’m 27, married to my wonderful husband Dan for over 3 years now, our home is in Stratham, NH with our 3 cats and Dan’s friend Scott, who is using up those empty bedrooms for now that hopefully someday children will reside in  I work in Finance/Insurance by day (start a new job at UNH in January!), and as a Wedding Videographer on the weekends. Dan does Computer/IT/Website work for a BMW Racing Company/Online Catalog Store.

The Hubby and I!

I started a blog for a few reasons:

1.) To keep me accountable in all aspects of healthy living,

2.) To have a place to chat about any obstacles I face, or any helpful hints or tips I pic up along the way,

3.)  and because I have too much free time on my hands?

My Story…

Over the past year, I have completely changed my life.  I have lost 35 pounds and gone down to sizes, but most importantly, gained back my health! I still have several pounds to lose, but I know I am on the right track and even if the process is a slow one, I know there is no going back to unhealthy living, and my goal of no longer being overweight is 100% attainable.

Early 2009 marked a turning point in my life. Nevermind the number on the scale growing higher and higher over the years, or the fact that I felt squished into amusement park rides (or couldn’t get on them at all!), or that my self-consciousness ruled every aspect of my life…all of those things had creeped up over time and denial about how unhealthy I had become was evident to probably everyone around me. I was always concerned with the vanity aspect of being overweight, never really thought much about my overall health…because really, I wasn’t “that” big…diseases related to obesity are for the REALLY big people (this is where denial comes into play!).

One day at work, during a visit from our health insurance provider for a program aimed to shape us employees up, I discovered my cholesterol was not so great. Something sunk in for me at that moment…I was ruining my body on the inside, not just the outside. Prior to this, I never had any health problems related to being overweight, so it never crossed my mind that I might actually have any issues. Thinking about having high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, etc…simply because I was treating my body like a garbage can…it just struck me as the final straw. I could handle having to buy plus-size clothes and having to wear a t-shirt over my bathing suit, but I couldn’t handle knowing I was shortening my life…or even worse, jeopordizing my ability to have childen safely at some point.

So then my journey began. I give a HUGE amount of credit to the discovery of Zumba, and I am eternally thankful for the girls who discovered it before me who recommended it. I started to believe exercise was always just going to be torture, until I started taking these classes. Extremely high energy dance cardio classes, where you are too busy having fun to realize you are burning between 400-800 calories an hour. Plus I am lucky to have an instructor who is very motivating and pushes you to want better for yourself, and she is just a ton of fun! Sometime around June I stopped being a chicken and began taking the Strength Training classes she offered as well, and I truly believe you cannot make a big change in your body without adding this to your workout! Now I workout between 6-7 hours a week, and I love (almost) every minute of it!

I made the mistake early on of thinking that just exercise was enough to take the pounds off. I exercised 3-4 times a week, an hour each time, without changing my diet much, and didn’t lose a single pound for a couple months. It wasn’t until I began researching nutrition and learning more about whole foods and clean eating and put what I learned into practice, that I began to lose some actual weight. Going vegetarian (technically pescetarian, I eat seafood occasionally) around the same time certainly didn’t hurt either!  Initially I went vegetarian for ethical reasons, but quickly realized the health benefits weren’t too shabby either. Being veg forces me to eat more fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and that makes for a healthier me I live by a 90/10 rule…as long as 90% of what I put into my body is clean, wholesome, non-processed food, then it is ok to have a treat and not be perfect 10% of the time. It’s foolish to think you can be perfect all of the time or never have a brownie ever again, for example. Who wants to live that kind of life anyways? 

Now I find myself a couple sizes smaller within a 6-7 month time period, and I feel amazing and healthy and I cannot wait to see more results! I never feel deprived, I no longer use the word diet (I think I joined Weight Watchers probably 15 times in my life and failed each time!) and now I just consider my way of living a permanent lifestyle change. I know that eating wholesome, clean foods means I will have more energy and better health, and that feeling alone is enough to keep me going!