4 things that helped me lose the quarantine 15 & continues to help me reach my goals

I will be the first person to say that I have never been one to eat healthy. I’ve been on my gym/weight loss journey for almost 5 years now and these past eight months have been the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life.

Before I get into the things I’ve recently changed, I wanna show you guys where I started. I remember taking this photo like it was yesterday. I want to say it was the end of junior year, around spring 2015, I was 195 pounds. I remember staring in the mirror being scared but I was going to look like that my whole life, that I would always hate myself, and that I’d never be happy with who I was.

My body has always had a lot of muscle because I’ve been riding horses since I was eight, but I had a lot of work to do. I truly had no idea where to start, but the first thing I did was sign up for planet fitness.

That was when my weight lifting journey began, but the gym was never a priority to me. I always had excuses. I know sometimes there were real reasons but I should’ve disciplined myself more to make it a NEED to go.

I never thought that I could be successful with my goals when it came to weight loss. I was constantly picking myself apart in the mirror, reminding myself how big my stomach is, how wide my legs are, how my arms look like breadsticks, I could keep going. It has been a long ride to get to where I am at now. I would always get stuck at certain numbers and then give up for a while, and told myself I’d never get below it. 160 was a bitch let me tell you, I never thought I would see 159. The same thing happened once i got to 155, couldn’t get past it. I chilled in the 150s for a while.

Finally in December 2019 -January 2020 I was around 143-147, it was different everyday, but that was my new lowest, I was feeling on top of the world but my brain still reminded me I was fat daily.

Covid hit and gyms closed in March, I knew instantly I was screwed, I told myself I was going to get fat again.... and I did. By June I was back in the high 150s, almost 160 again, and the first week of July was when I started driving to Toledo because I needed to get into a motivated mindset again. I bought some weights and workout bands from my job and would do some at home workouts, but it wasn’t working for me. (if you can workout at home I give you MAD props I have no motivation at home) I would spend 2 to 3 hours at the gym in Toledo to feel like making the hour drive was worth it.

This was July-August

This was when my mindset started to change, I knew I had to fix more than just how often I was going to the gym and working out, I had to completely change my lifestyle and what I eat and how much. Portion control was not in my vocabulary you could say. In July-August was when I was finally like "okay, now that you did this … how are you going to get back to where you were"

The first new thing I did was ..

1) MY FITNESS PAL

I downloaded the my fitness pal app around the time I was driving to Ohio. I just wanted to see approximately how many calories I was eating a day. I was putting in probably 2500-3000 a day, but not thinking at all about what I was putting in my body and how it could affect it. I was just eating carelessly from being at home all the time. This may not seem like much, but as someone who had never tracked their meals before it helped a lot. It was also an accountability thing for me, some days I would feel embarrassed by how much I had to log that I ate in a day, but it motivated me to be better the next day.

I deleted the app a while ago because I ran out of storage on my phone, but I want to get it back because I’ve been stuck at my current weight for a few weeks now and I want to start learning about macros, and the numbers for how many protein, fat, & carbs is best for my body! This is all still super new to me.

2) Protein smoothie meal replacement

I still don’t know how to “eat correctly” I guess you could say, I’m far from an expert, but for me I try every day to have a protein smoothie for a meal, gym or no gym. My go to smoothie is ..

-2 cups of strawberries

-one banana

-2 tablespoons of peanut butter

(I recently bought PB2 powdered peanut butter it is a way better option, better than any organic peanut butter on the shelfs.)

-a scoop of vanilla protein

-a scoop of collagen,

-a scoop of greens.

-1 to 2 cups of ice

It’s my favorite meal of the day!

3) Habit tracker

This may seem strange to some, but I’m definitely one of those “list” types of people that love checking things off a to do list on busy days. with the habit tracker I’m able to check multiple things off of the list every day! I track what days I go to the gym, when I drink the full gallon of water, and I’m also just tracking some little things that I should’ve been doing already … Like doing my skin care routine every morning and night, putting lotion on before bed, how often I’m seeing my horse, taking my vitamins every morning, tanning, things that I already should be doing almost every day that now are pretty normal to me! It’s satisfying when I can mark off multiple things on the list, and it helped me hold myself accountable because I see it everyday.

For example, I need to be way better about the gym in April, this month I only went 10 times, some days I went and rollerbladed instead of going there, but I need consistent weight workouts.

In January I went to the gym 17 times, tanned 15 times, and made 9 smoothies.

In February I went to the gym 11 times, tanned 9, drank the full gallon of water 12 times, and had 16 smoothies.

In March I went to the gym 10 times, tanned 7 times, had 16 full gallons of water, and 21 smoothies.

Some numbers are better than others, this month I started off strong and lost motivation in the middle, then got motivated at the end. I am going to focus more on being at the gym every 1-2 days next month for sure.

4) Free weights

I was, and still am a very insecure individual, I can admit that, and one place I avoided in the gym is the free weights section. For a while it was because I told myself I was doing the exercises wrong or holding the weight incorrectly, just stupid shit.. EXCUSES! Free weights have helped me tone up like crazy for my arms. I just look up a bunch of free weight workout videos on either Instagram or TikTok and do different ones for 30-45 minutes almost each time I’m at the gym. There’s no magic trick on that one, I was just missing something in my workout routine that has great results!

If you are reading this and are looking to change your lifestyle, I want to remind you no one really knows where to start when this journey begins. You don’t just start knowing how to do everything. I had no idea how to workout, use weight machines, eat healthy, but mainly because I didn’t believe in myself. That’s where you have to remind yourself you can. I wish I could tell myself back then when I was beating up on myself for only being able to work out for 20 to 30 minutes that one day I would be doing 1 to 2 hour workouts and feeling better then I ever have. I wish I could tell myself that I’ll learn how to not wear extensions and a full face of makeup to the gym. I wish I could tell myself 4 years ago that no one is watching you even if it feels like it. Everyone in that gym is there to better themselves, and that’s their focus. The mind is so powerful and can make you feel like you can't, or shouldn't do certain things, and that's where you have to tell yourself you can, and that every little thing you change is one step closer towards your goal.

I also wanna be better about progress pictures! I’m gonna take one at the end of each month so I can see how my body changes.

I am still in the process of trying to learn that the number on the scale doesn’t matter, what matters is that your living a healthy lifestyle and giving your body what it needs. I really wanted to make a blog post about this topic because this journey has been a long one for me, and I wanted to share more in detail on things I have changed!

Thank you so much for reading! I hope these small changes can help you like they have helped me. Make sure to subscribe to be one of the first to know when new posts go up!