Making Excuses Burns ZERO Calories

You've heard them all, you've used them all.. I just don't have time. I can't afford a gym membership. I work 12 hrs a day, the last thing I wanna do when I come home is work out. I have kids (HA) and the gym doesn't offer childcare. I can't afford the gas to drive to the gym every day.. The list goes on and on but the harsh truth is that no one can do this for you! You can do 1 of 2 things; 1. You can wait around until the time is right or until you can afford it or until someone offers to do it for you (p.s. you'll spend your whole life waiting) OR 2. You can decide that you want better for yourself, for your family, for your kids! and GET UP and do something about it! "If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right" - Henry Ford.

Hey, my name is Kay. I was born and raised in a small town in Mississippi and I have struggled with my weight all my life. Not only did I struggle with being overweight, but I was constantly criticized about it. I remember the first time my daddy ever said anything to me about my weight.. I was 11 years old and my sister and I were in the barn sitting on the saddles on the saddle stands and my daddy walked in and started talking to us. He came over to tie one of my straps that had come loose and put his hand on my leg and he said "you're getting so big, look at your leg, it's as big as both of my legs put together". That broke my heart y'all! Since that day, my weight has been a VERY touchy subject. Until I married my husband, I think my daddy was the one person I tried to hide my size from the most. My husband and I got married in 2018 after dating on and off for about 4 years and we had moved to Texas in 2014. Right after we got married, he decided to go Active Duty in the Army (he had been in the reserves since 2006), so in June of 2018 we moved to our first duty station in Washington State!

When we arrived in Washington in June, it was just into summer weather and y'all, it was gorgeous!! I know, I couldn't believe it either. It was a beautiful 70-85 degrees daily and felt like the most perfect temperature you could imagine. But there was a problem.. I had gained a lot of weight after having our 4th child in 2016 and I had let myself get to a number on the scale I thought I'd never have to see. I was over 300 pounds! I wanted in my heart to go on a hike and enjoy the beautiful weather but I kept making excuses.. I had gotten so lazy that I wanted to sit on the couch and do nothing all day because it was uncomfortable for me to do much of anything. I remembered my pre delivery weight and the last recorded weight before I had our daughter was 247 pounds and now I had gained well over 50 pounds. Something had to give. I'll be honest, I was one of those people who choose to sit around and wallow in self pity for a long time. It wasn't until November of 2018 that I decided to make a change and do something about it. So I talked to my doctor and had all my labs drawn and got some devastating news.. I had thyroid disease. For people who aren't sure what this means, it means people with under active thyroid (hypothyroidism) have an extremely hard time loosing weight with regular diet and exercise changes. The good news was that I had not yet developed diabetes, high blood pressure, or any comorbidities..YET! So my doctor recommended I go to a seminar about bariatric surgery and see if that was something I'd be interested in. I went and sat through about 1 1/2 hours of information and my mind was made up, I was going to have the surgery and get on top of my health. My BMI was 52% at that time which I qualified solely for that reason! I was a walking time bomb of sickness.

My next post will be about my surgery journey. I hope you will continue to follow along and get to know me more and take advantage of some of the valuable information I can scoop up for y'all!

Much love! Until next time,

Kay