Hi Stephanie! My name is Jennifer and
YOU are the reason I have signed on with Leigh!! Last month (or earlier this month) I saw your post on YaYa's and everything you said about still losing despite injuries and your progress convinced me to sign up with Leigh!! Thank you so much!
We are still in the bugg phase, but soon (feel like I'm waiting for Christmas day to come) she will be sending me everything I need to start this journey. Everything I have read about Leigh has been positive! I am so excited and ready for this.
A couple things I wanted to mention to you are in reference to your one day seeing the progress and the next day not. I lost close to 50lb a few years ago. I was in the best shape of my life, definition, very small size in clothes, etc. YET, I still thought I was fat. To make a super long story short, I never made peace with the new me. The transformation was just so bizarre. While I loved feeling thin and cut, I still had the old tapes playing in my head that told me I was fat or not worthy, blah, blah, blah.
Well, as I upped the intensity of my workouts over time, I could not get it in my thick head that I needed to eat more. So began the horrible cycle of not eating enough (and I'm not talking anorexia here--I was eating probably 1,800--2,000 cals a day, but doing major calorie burning (1,200 cals on my heartrate monitor some times (for a super long workout), so it simply wasn't enough) and bingeing. This worked for a while until the injuries started. Again, in a nutshell, I've had plantar fasciitis for a year and a half and then a year ago was diagnosed with a bulging disc in my neck. I was still able to weight train with the PF, but once the disc happened, I had to pretty much stop.
So, you can imagine the level of stress I had knowing full well what was going to happen if I had to stop using weights. It took some time, but sure enough, I lost almost all my definition and then due to stress eating gained probably 12 lb. Such anger, sadness, anxiety I felt (still feel)...
I did manage to heal my neck pain with the use of an amazing book by Dr. John Sarno (but that's a whole post unto itself), and am back to my full-on upper body Cathe videos again. Woohoo!! I'm also kind of at the point where I'm just dealing with the PF versus fearing it and have been doing Cathe (and other) kickboxing videos again for the past 2 months. Oh how wonderful it feels! Now of course my feet are still hurting me, but they're not getting worse. Compared to the neck pain I had, I can deal with this.
Sorry this is long-winded, but I really do have a point. That being that I really think it takes a long time for our brains to catch up with the weight loss. I remember seeing pictures of myself at my son's birthday and at the time thinking I still had fat to lose. Now when I see those pics, I would KILL to be back there. It's all perception. I realize now that I had internal struggle with the thin me versus the me that always my whole life was over weight. I was always called a "big girl". It's so hard to get over those things that have been ingrained in us.
Your progress is wonderful and you look wonderful. You honestly looked beautiful in your dress pictures. I know how hard it is to see that. And like you mentioned PMS, that just sucks no matter what.
Please know that you inspired someone (probably dozens others too) with your posts on YaYas. I feel like I finally now am going to have the support I really needed all along. I cannot tell you how wonderful and comforting that is. I'm ready to get my body back to where it was (maybe even better?!), but this time
ENJOY it.
Thanks again for inspiring me. I'll definitely keep you posted on my progress. Remember, you look great and you're doing an amazing job!!
--Jennifer
