In skinspot’s October newsletter, I shared with subscribers my weight loss/ health journey.  I realized that I have never really shared too much about it on the blog, so I decided to share it here too.  If you are a fullspot reader and you get skinspot’s newsletter,  I apologize for the redundancy.  That is a lot of Kelli for one day.  A lot.   

Without further adieu, my story:

For the majority of my earlier years I struggled with my weight.  As a kid, I wasn’t over weight by today’s standards, but in those days I was definitely on the heavier side.  I attended my first Weight Watchers meeting in my early teens.  Weight Watchers and I didn’t really get along, so I opted for whatever diet would suit my fancy that week. However, with every carrot & slim fast diet, a pizza and cookie diet followed suit and thus began my ever-frustrating weight loss quest.  I graduated high school tired, unmotivated and over weight.  This is not the trio one dreams of obtaining when embarking on the exciting journey of adulthood. My first year of college I spent more time in the cafeteria than I did in the classroom. I gained the fairly traditional “freshmen 15.”  At the end of that year, my already shaky self esteem, had hit a new low.  This lack of self-esteem transferred to my education.  I had little motivation to preform well in school and I didn’t trust myself to pick a major and actually succeed at it, so after, three and a half years of college, I decided to drop out.  After all of my college friends got their degrees we decided to make the move to Phoenix, Arizona.  

On our way to the Phoenix:

After about a year of living in Phoenix, I joined a gym and Arizona State University.  I was back in school and working out somewhat consistently.  However, I wasn’t fully invested in my education or my health.  I lost a few pounds, had a little more energy and felt mildly better about the state of my future.  And then, after and honest to goodness heart-to-heart with my best friend, I decided I wanted more.  I was tired of feeling insecure, tired and mediocre.  So, I pulled out my old Weight Watchers tools and figured out my daily allotment of points.  I knew nothing about nutrition, so I just found a way to eat within my points’ range with a lot of prepackaged, processed food.  In addition, to limiting my eats, I started running.  It started out with twenty minutes (albeit the worst twenty minutes of my life). When twenty minutes started to feel doable I increased to 25 and I went up from there.  I was eventually running 60 minutes every day and I was actually enjoying it.  The combination of these two changes  lead to a 40 lb weight loss.  That was the tangible aspect of my accomplishments, but the unseen is what really amazes me.  After completing the two things that I never dreamed would actually be my reality, something inside me shifted. I believed in myself.  I truly felt that what I put my noggin’ to I could accomplish.  Not too long after that, I landed my fanny on the Dean’s list and finally completed my undergraduate education and I ran a marathon.  Not too shabby for a former (self-proclaimed) couch potato, unambitious lady.  However, the militant and (borderline) obsessive lifestyle that lead me to my achievements, set me up with a less than healthy relationship with food and my body.  I did not view food as fuel and exercise became equated with punishment.  If I ate too many calories and I didn’t exercise for x amount of hours I was bad, sick and wrong and I was going to get fat again.  This was the mantra playing in my noggin’.  Not the healthiest of environments.  Shortly after I completed the Phoenix marathon, I was in an accident in which I shattered both of my heels and my back.  There was a moment when the doctors were not sure if I was ever going to walk again and I certainly was not going to run again. I spent three months in a wheelchair and a back brace while my saint of a mother (with the help of some remarkable physicians) put me back together.  By the grace of something bigger than myself, I was not paralyzed, but the doctors were not sure what the quality of my life would be like.  Many of the doctors were concerned about the onset of arthritis in my early 30′s.  At the age of 26, I was not like every other 26-year-old out there, I now had to really consider taking care of my body, so I started to look at food through a new set of eyes.  I began reading every nutrition book I could get my hands on to really figure out what foods were serving me.  After years of studying and implanting various dietary theories, I decided to put a credential behind my many years of nutrition studies and I enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.  I am now 32 years old an AADP certified holistic health coach, I have no arthritic conditions, I am running (although no more marathons), I have maintained my 40lb weight loss and then some,  I have a vitality that I would have killed for at 16, I do not count calories,  I exercise for therapeutic reasons, and I have a balanced relationship with food (most of the time).  I truly feel that I have tapped in to my sweetspot.  It is through this sweetspot that I am able to create nourishing relationships in my life, do what I love, and be the best version of me.   I am not sharing my story to pat myself on the back, but to show you that if I can do it, anybody can do it.  And I would love to help you do it.  If you think that we might be a match for one another, then I invite to a sweetspot strategy session.  It is 20 minutes and it is free.  What do you have to lose?  Think about what you have to gain.  Could one conversation change your life?  It certainly changed mine.  

This is me at our wedding September 2011:

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