About Christie O.
Hi! I’m Christie O!
My weight-loss journey started with a picture. Everyone says you have to hit rock bottom in order to make a change, right? Well this picture was it.
There I was, overweight and out of shape, with my bouncing baby boy on my knee at a birthday party. Someone sent me their pictures from their birthday party and I burst into tears when I saw this picture. Because it wasn’t me! It wasn’t the me I had known, anyway! But I could tell it was the “me” everyone else saw. It was the one that people stopped paying attention to, the “me” everyone just looked right past. I cried in the dressing rooms and would sweat profusely trying on sizes I never imagined I’d ever wear — only to find they were tight! I remember trying clothes on all day long, giving up and finding a great pair of expensive shoes and fighting with my husband because he was mad that I got shoes instead of clothes. (I think that was the last time he picked a fight like that! Go ahead, just try to poke an angry postpartum mama bear!)
So the night I saw that picture, I logged onto the internet, found Couch to 5k, signed up for a 5k (because without a goal and a deadline, I cannot be trusted!) and worked away. I lost 17 pounds by the time of that 5k and kept going. I ran a couple more 5ks, a 10k in November and a half-marathon in spring 2009. I had also enlisted help from some of my bloggy friends and together we weighed in and got fit together. (The support works! That’s why I’m here!) It was the perfect storm.
I won’t say that I gained confidence from weight-loss, but I will say that I gained confidence from the journey. Because this journey is so freakin’ hard, there are times you want to quit, there are times that you find yourself facing your fears and all of your inner demons and you don’t think you can quite get there. But the longer you stay on the ride, the further the road reaches behind you and you see how far you’ve come. All of a sudden, you can’t see the starting point and you can begin to see the finish!
And you learned that by having faith in yourself and by sticking it out in the face of all your demons, there is a strong “you”, and courageous and brave “you”.
The one who will wear spandex out loud.
So there I am now, almost 40 pounds lighter and weighing less than on my wedding day. I’m a 34ish, stay at home mommy with two little boys, ages 3 and 2.
And I’m here to say, “Yes. It’s possible.”
2010 is OUR YEAR!
