A Little Bit About Me...

I realized Friday that I've never really given a good profile of myself on this blog and where I've come from. Some quickies:

• I was a lean, mean, kid-machine when I was little. By the time I hit puberty, my body did a complete 180 and became soft, likely due to the move to another town with a lack of kids to play with, and those who were there were unmercifully evil. I was thenceforth an overweight teen, and my self-esteem took a number.
• I discovered a love for fitness (without knowing much) my Senior year of high school and participated in weight training, cardio, and a dance class for the first time ever. Lost 30 pounds or so (by not eating and then also moving), but gained them all back when I moved to college (I started eating and stopped moving).
• In college, I stayed semi-active in karate, working toward a black belt and never losing the gained 30 pounds, although there was a short one-half year period where I was a camp counselor at a canoe camp for a summer, lost 20 pounds, and kept them off, until...
• Upon graduating college with a black belt, I had regained those pounds and was now weighing in at 193 (which put me in a tight size 16). Remembering my love for weight training, I joined a gym, got a personal trainer, followed the Body-for-Life method of training and The Zone method of eating, losing 20 pounds by my wedding the next summer. (I thought I looked awesome, by the way- I was then a 14, tight 12.)
• Upon getting married, I got preggers and gained 35 pounds with the pregnancy. This took me up to my all-time high of 205, and boy, was I depressed upon coming home and discovering that I was back to 193 (which I retained for a year, despite getting back into the gym).
• After finally getting my life in order, a different job, and no longer having my sleep interrupted, I dropped those extra 20 pounds at the same time my daughter turned one.
• That put me at 173 in January 2004.
• I have since been working hard on performance and nutrition and getting down to my ultimate lean goal of 145 and 20% bf (whichever looks better). I am currently weighing in at 154, wearing size 12's that are too big, and medium and large size shirts.

And that's the (really long) synopsis of weight and struggles. Mentally, I've come a long way, from working out being a burden and not knowing what a vegetable was, to generally eating 3-7 servings of fruits and veggies a day. Actualization-wise, I've discovered a love for fitness and wanting to guide others toward a life of health and happiness through fitness. I'm nowhere near where I truly want to be yet, but that is a life-long journey and I'm working as hard toward it as possible!

I am currently pursuing a Sports Science Master's Degree at a University in the midwestern states, with the goal of preventing other teenagers from knowing the evil of having to be an overweight teen (unless they LIKE being that way, in which case I'll leave them alone).

I have a VO2max of 38.7 ml/kg/min (up from 33 ml/kg/min in April), which puts me in the 50th percentile (average) for maximum Oxygen consumption, my actual max heart rate is 184 bpm (predicted is 193) and I've been known to maintain a work rate at 90% of my max for 20 minutes, can maintain a plank and side plank for over a minute, can dumbbell benchpress 30 pounds each hand for 3x8, squat dumbbell with 25 lbs in each hand for 3x8, do 2 chinups unassisted, and do 5 single-leg squats on the weak side while holding a doorframe for balance and a little bit of help. Is that complete actualization? No way. In fact, many people wouldn't even consider being a personal trainer at that "level" of fitness. However, its the best I've ever been, and it's 1-3 steps ahead of most females in this country.

And here's the important part: I'm still working toward becoming better. How many personal trainers, who were high-level athletes in high school/college and never a fat day in their life (except those 5 years post-college), can say that? Okay, so there's a little bit of a superiority complex in that, but really. This is where I'm at now, and you can read how much better I've become as the days and months go by. I do intend to show others by example that health and fitness are not a burden, but a wonderful way of life! And that most of success is the fact that you not only fell down, but got back up. Again. And again.