A Little Bit About My Weight History.

I was always a thin girl. I never had any weight issues. I DID learn about emotional eating from an early age though. I was ALWAYS sick because of my immune system being low because of my parents smoking . I had many stays in the hospital because of pneumonia. My brother got the croup, and the doctor told my mom that she was going to kill him if she kept smoking. They quit...he was 2, I was 6. Our house was a volatile household, and it was stressful never knowing which mood we would encounter. We had company all the time, and a lot of the time our relatives would come over and it was quite fun...but some of the time it was even more volatile than our own household.

My teenage years were tumultous. I 'left' home at 17, standing on the curb with my garbage bag of possessions, like white trash, waiting for a friends family to come and take me in. I had some serious abandonment issues which led to building walls as a protection.

Fast forward a couple of months and you find me living with my newly married, newly pregnant sister. The friend I had been living with was getting married and I would have no place to go...no job, no money. My sister took me in. At this point, my stress manifested itself by not eating. It got to the point where the smell of food would make me sick. I began a new relationship soon after moving, and my boyfriend was worried about me. So he took me to his chiropractor because he would have an issue where he couldn't eat either and the chiropractor would adjust him and it would work again, he could eat. I went there, had an adjustment and it likely helped my stress level because I could tolerate food and the smell again.

A year later, my fiancee and I got married. I was 19, and weighed 107 pounds (5'3"). I was pretty thin. Being on the birth control 'helped' me gain 30 pounds that first year. Weight gain was only one of the side effects I began to have....so I went off of it.

When I was 25 we tried to have a baby. Unfortunately, it took 2.5 years to get pregnant. Six months before I finally was blessed with a pregnancy, I had a snow mobile accident. I rolled my snow mobile on top of myself, but luckily, the ice that I was afraid I was breaking through gave way, and I ended up in a foot of ice water, on top of the frozen lake. I smashed the windshield, but because of a pouty guy friend who was with us, it got my back up, and I continued snowmobiling for another 6 hours. Yeah...I wasn't aware of my injuries until the next morning when I couldn't lift my head off my pillow. I had whip lash, broken ribs, ribs popped out of place, HUGE black bruises on my inner thighs and knees. That's when I told my husband what had happened...hehe...he was at work and not out with our caravan of snowmobilers. My brother and sister in law were with me when it happened though. (I wasn't the only one to roll a snowmobile that day, another friend who was a teen also rolled his, but out of stupidity...and not fear like I did.) What resulted from this incident was chronic back pain. Sometimes the pain would be so bad, like a wave it would hit me, and I'd have to lie down where ever I was. This combined with the stress of not being able to get pregnant was too much for me, and I went into a bit of a depression.

Fast forward 7 months, my husband, my parents and I take a road trip to Newfoundland to see my Grandparents. That was fun. :o) A MUCH needed vacation.

The next month, I was job hunting, got a new job and found out I was pregnant all at the same time. LOL. I enjoyed this job...until I started bleeding. After a phone call to my doctor and a 'leave' from work, I spent 2 weeks on bed rest worrying that I was going to lose the baby I so badly wanted. Happily that pregnancy survived and at 8 months pregnant, I was again placed on bed rest due to Toxemia. I was induced 2 weeks early. The labour and delivery progressed fast and furiously. But then, as my husband stood watching all my blood pour out on the floor, I was rushed for emergency surgery. They told my husband that I was dying, that he would be a single parent, in an attempt to get him to convince me to have blood, which I refused. I held my baby once, and was sure I was not coming out alive. When I did awake, I was surprised. I had lost over half my blood volume from a rip in my cervix. My 9lb 9 oz baby ripped it because a lip hadn't dialated fully, and she tore through it. After 8 more days in the hospital building my blood up, I finally came home, weighing 2 pounds more than when I went in to have her! It's because of the saline salution (the non-blood expander) that I weighed more. I had gained about 65 pounds with the pregancy, and after ALL the water, the blood, the huge baby, I still weighed more.

When my daughter was 18 months old, we moved to a new town, an hour away, no friends, no family. We had bought a new business and my husband was ill, so we had to move. I gained another 30 pounds that year. By this time, I was well over 200 lbs. A LOOOONG way from the 107 pound girl who got married. I told myself that I would have another baby after I had lost my weight.....and I never did. In hind sight, I think it was because I was afraid to have another baby, encounter similar problems, and potentially leave behind a husband and a little girl should I die. When Emily was 4 and in Junior Kindergarten, I decided to take some college courses to become an Educational Assistant. I was really enjoying myself. Then one day, I had this random thought. "I am having too much fun, Emily's going to end up being an only child!" And that thought changed everything. We were able to get pregnant again, quite easily. The first month trying actually! Unfortunately, I lost that baby just before 3 months, and it plunged me into a depression. It was especially hard because 2 of my friends were also pregnant, and one of them had her baby on my due date. Finally, to get myself out of this funk, I asked my husband for a personal trainer for our anniversary. Obviously, he'd do anything, so he got me one. I was doing really well, enjoying the working out. And six months later, I was blessed with another pregnancy and a January baby. She was 9lb 1 oz, and right on time. It was a stressful pregnancy for the first 3 months because I was afraid of losing her...after I made it past there, our fears were put to rest with our specialist. I LOVE HIM!! I had only gained 14 pounds with that pregnancy because I had a lot of my own weight to feed her. After she was born, I lost 28 pounds practically by breathing. :O)

Both Bridget and Emily were colicky...and that was no walk in the park, all contibuting to my vicious circle of exhaustion and weight gain.
Bridget was supposed to be our last baby, and when she was 3 months old, I mourned not having a little sibling for her to play with. Emily was 6 1/2 years older, and coming from a family where I had 2 older sisters (5 & 7 years older) and a younger brother (4 years younger) I knew that it would suck huge for Bridget. When she was 13 months, I was having allergic responses to food, and my body was inflamed because of that chronic muscle pain from the snow mobile accident. As a desperate measure, I stopped nursing, and went gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free...and started losing weight...and feeling fantastic. I lost 45 pounds in 5 months. During this time, my husband sold the business and we moved back to our old town, in our house that we kept. I told my husband my concerns and so when Bridget was 27 months old, Issy was born. She was my biggest baby. A week overdue, weighing in at 9lbs, 13 oz. She became ill the day she was born because she swallowed meconium while inside me and she was septic. She spent the week in the Special Care nursery.

When Issy was 13 months old, I had an 'episode'. It was 11 pm and I was watching a DVR of "Greys Anatomy"...after a stressful day. When all of a sudden, I hear my husband yelling at me "Lisa, are you OK?" he kept yelling this and I didn't know why. He was already on the phone with 911, and emergency responders were on the way. Apparently I had a 'seizure' which they're calling a fainting spell, but because I was sitting, I kept 'seizing' instead of passing out. By the time the emergency responders were here, I had stumbled into the kitchen, freaked out, my blood pressure was jacked. I spent the weekend in the hospital on heart monitors because I had an arrythmia. Their official diagnosis was 'fainting spell due to extreme exhaustion and stress'. That weekend, I stopped nursing, and we put Isabella in her own room. Around this time, I knew that I had to do something to take care of me, or one day I would have a fatal heart attack or something. I joined The Biggest Loser Club online. I met a bunch of wonderful online friends there, and have followed some over to Weight Loss Wars. At BLC I had lost about 13 pounds (starting at 290). I needed a change though because I didn't want to keep paying and I wasn't losing more...got a little disillusioned because of a couple of foot injuries.

I've been on Weightloss Wars since the end of December 2008, but haven't made any strides with my weightloss until around June when I started doing the Gabriel Method. I have since lost another 20 pounds.

On weight loss wars, and The Gabriel Method, I have become freed of the shackles of this weight that was tying me down and keeping me from living my life. I am at the most peaceful, stress-free, happiest I have ever been regarding life in general, and my weight. I am at peace with it...and I thought it was time that I started this blog to maybe help inspire someone else as I have been inspired. A huge hug to my dear friends Pitbull (my health/fitness kindred spirit journey partner in crime), Cristy (my Kindred spirit friend and Maid of Honour almost 20 years ago) and Mary (my childhood kindred spirit friend who did my first 5K with me), for lending shoulders and just being there for me through thick and thin and sharing in health and fitness XO; my brother G, for joining me on a healthy lifestyle makeover and making it so easy to talk about; my mentor Jan; my inspirations (Stacie, Roxann, Sam, Robyn, Lisa P, and Karilynn {Mom24boys}-(thinformyboys) - for showing me her blog and inspiring me to do one.) My BLC friends, SparkPeople groups; Firecracker challenge (Kay, Rho, Deb, Patricia, et al) Gabriel Method group (Maddy, Sondra, Chris, Troy et al) My other WLW friends (Pammy, Hope, Tammy, Elle, Tim, Chris, Lori, Laurie, Denise, Angie, Aimee, et al, my No More Excuses Ladies (Linda, Melissa, Renee, Kim, Jillian and Giselle) and my biggest supporters and fans, my husband and girls. This is for them as much as it is for me! It's time to shine, to live, to fly, to shrink!