After surviving my doctors appointment fairly unscathed, both my husband and I are really hopeful that we are on the right track. I’m always worried with my family’s medical history that it could be preventing our success, but I’m tested every year for diabetes and thyroid and I’m always in normal levels. All my other blood tests and exams come back normal – even my blood pressure is normal. I’m normal – but I’m overweight.

I’ve been big ever since I hit 18 and my body shifted to one of muscle mass to one that had curves that just kept getting more pronounced. This is a family trait on my father’s side where the women can easily shift from that of a fit woman to a fat woman over the span of a few years.

If you met me in the last 15 years you have always known me as heavy. You don’t know that I used to be a pretty good athlete, having played many sports and doing lots of activities. In high school I walked all the way to work more often than not as waiting for the bus just seemed like a waste of time. I’d even eat a meal at work and stayed the same weight for 3 years straight. McDonald’s wasn’t fattening for me and it’s hard to forget that. It’s hard to let go of how much energy I used to burn and how many calories I needed to maintain that.

Yet here I am – early-mid 30s and I’m overweight. Scratch that, I’m obese. Technically on the BMI scale I’m obese. I know it, and people around me know.

What the people around me don’t know is that I’ve been actually losing weight. No one really notices unless they start to see my pants falling down, which oddly happens a lot lately. I’ve been walking more, exercising a bit and eating a little better. It’s small things, but it’s helping me.

My doctor has mentioned that my weight may be a big barrier to us getting pregnant and carrying the pregnancy. The hubs and I have decided it’s time to get fit again. Eat healthy as much as we can and do more to make this work. We want to be parents and both feel that we’d be good ones. I love kids and he’s really grown to appreciate them the more he spends with them.

Of course it wasn’t just the idea of a baby that made me realize this. It was when I hit my highest weight ever. I used to be big in my early 20s and then lost much of it when I moved to Alberta and didn’t have a car to get me around. I was big then – but I was never this big. I looked at the scale and was appalled by what I saw. The funny thing was that I actually knew what I needed to do in order to turn that around. I was fully aware of how I could do better. I know about portions and exercise and I know that these are easy things for me to do.

But something snapped in me. I don’t feel that I have ever eaten that bad, but it was the exercise that was killing me. Being a big person is difficult for exercise because your clothing choices are so limited, especially when you have big breasts like me. (Yep – I’ve got myself biggins) It’s challenging to find clothing that fits and breathes and moves properly when you are big. I also hate things on my neck – Hate with a capitol H. Normal t-shirts just won’t cut it. Going to stores where they sell sporty clothing is impossible because they mostly all stop at XL and sometimes not even that. Going to the plus size stores and the options are even further limited. It’s like they want to keep you bigger so that you can keep paying more for the clothing. (now that’s a rant for another day!)

I’m putting it in writing – this time I have been working to a goal. I need to lose 20 more pounds. This will help kick start my body into being ready for a baby and I’ll feel better about myself. I’ll be down a dress size or two and I can go on a good shopping spree for some pants that fit. I know looking at my curves you’d think 20 lbs is the tip of the ice burg, and truly it is. But there is something so horrendous in your mind once you are over 200 lbs. You want to get under it, but when you get as high as me, you start to think that’s unattainable, and it’s unhealthy to try and get to that weight so fast. So I’m starting here – 20 more pounds. Well 19 really. I started the journey wanting to lose 30 and I’m already down 11. On a skinny girl that’s a huge deal, but for a big girl like me it’s nothing.

Today, I signed back up with the Daily Plate and me and the hubs are going to keep track of what we are doing with it. I’m going to start logging more activities with runkeeper on my phone, and started with a 30 minute brisk walk around our neighbourhood. Because I didn’t feel that I was done I did 15 minutes of mainly arm work with my Jenny McCarthy workout on the Wii. It’s a start, but I’ve burned more calories than I would’ve otherwise.

I’m going to keep focusing on the mantra – it doesn’t matter how fast you are going, you are still lapping all those people on the couch.