January Monthly Weight Loss Weigh In {Rebecca and Dan}

January Monthly Weight Loss Weigh In {Rebecca and Dan}

Happy New Year All! I have a guest post to share with you today. My parents are active in our Instant Loss Facebook Community. Some of you know bits and pieces of their story and some of you don’t. It’s a very relevant, important story, that I think we can all relate to, learn, and be inspired from. 

My mom has agreed to begin posting monthly weigh ins here on the blog as her and my Dad take part in the Instant Loss 2018 New Year Challenge. I hope that this will provide lots of motivation for all of you who are beginning your weight loss journeys! This is YOUR year! 

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Hi, I’m Rebecca and this is my husband Dan. Some of you may know me from the Facebook Community,  I’m Brittany’s mom! I have shared bits and pieces of our story but with the New Year approaching I felt a burden to bare all in hopes of encouraging some, and others of you who have had success, can hopefully learn from our mistakes!

My husband and I are “yo-yo dieters”. We experienced incredible weight loss success eating “real food,” in 2014. Only to gain all the weight back after backsliding back into old habits. 

We both have struggled with being over weight most of our adult lives. We were thin in high school but our diet was not healthy and we didn’t know the things we do now, because the information regarding nutrition and how food effects our bodies just wasn’t mainstream back then.

We married young and started our family right away. Brittany was born when I was 18! I gained 60lbs during my first pregnancy. I loved babies and wanted a lot of them.

I had 7 babies over 12 years. Yes, Brittany is the eldest of 7! By the time I got to babies 5 and 6, I was over 200lbs. I struggled losing the weight because I didn’t understand enough about food and “dieting.” I lost the weight between 230 and 200lbs, 7 separate times on “diet plans,” always putting the weight back on. 

 

My husband, Dan, started gaining weight right after our wedding when he broke his leg, due to immobility.  Our poor diet and lack of knowledge regarding food caused him to steadily gain weight into his 20s and 30s.

 

We both had many successes on “fad diets” only to gain the weight back as soon as we returned to the way we always ate. For my husband though it began effecting his health in major ways. He began exhibiting symptoms in his late 20s and all throughout his 30s it seemed like the chronic health problems kept piling on.

By 2013, he had suffered for over 15 years with multiple chronic conditions including sleep apnea, reflux, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low testosterone, myofascial pain syndrome, chronic headaches, chronic fatigue, severe muscle cramps, severe allergies, and rheumatoid arthritis. He was on 15 separate prescription medications at one point and seeing 3 different specialists on a regular basis. 

Brittany was the one who kept telling us that if we changed our diets permanently it may solve many of his health problems. We thought that was ridiculous. He had legitimate chronic health conditions, that had nothing to do with food, or so we thought. Finally, after hearing her refer so many times to the correlation of food and health and then seeing a Dr Oz special on detoxing off certain food groups and then adding them back to see how they effect your body, we decided we had to give it a try. His pain and health had gotten se bad he literally didn’t know how he could go on suffering like he was.

Out of desperation we decided to radically change our diet in 2014. 

Where do you start? We didn’t know where to start!

So after telling my husbands mother what we wanted to try, she told me about The Daniel Plan book she had just seen promoted, which sounded very similar to what we wanted to do. Once I checked into it and saw it included meal plans and recipes, we were excited to not have to just “wing it” trying to figure out what to eat on our own. This made following a plan and learning a new way of cooking, shopping and eating less overwhelming and more doable.

It is difficult and expensive at first, replacing everything in your pantry with completely different ingredients, you may have never heard of before. But, over time it became easy and learning to read labels and choose the best foods became easier as well.

Side note: That is one thing that is so fabulous about Brittany’s meal plans, she has done all the work and made it doable for anyone to eat a variety of healthy, yummy, real food!

We started detoxing and changing our diet in 2014 and lost 175 pounds together that year! Within just 2 months, my husbands health had improved significantly. Many of his chronic health problems resolved and by mid year he was off ALL of his prescription medications. We never imagined that all his problems could truly be attributed to poor diet. Bad food was killing him slowly!

 

I would love to tell you that that is the end of the story, that we are thin and healthy and living happily ever after. That is not our story.

In 2015 we got derailed from our healthy lifestyle by a traumatic event within our family. Many of you know, Brittany has suffered infant loss. That year she lost her son Elias at 39 weeks pregnant. I spent several weeks in Texas with her where she lived dealing with the aftermath. They also closed on a new house that same week and had to move. It was a very traumatic and sad time.

Sticking to a routine and not compromising what I ate went right out the window. Suddenly it just didn’t seem so important what I ate. I still remember the first thing I ate that compromised our 15 months of clean eating. It was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. My state of mind during that time was that I could get back to eating healthy once the crisis was over and things settled down. It wasn’t total abandonment of healthy eating, it was little compromises at first.

Like the mudslide i enjoyed at the TGIFridays in the DFW airport while I was waiting for my flight home two weeks later. It was delicious, I needed a drink after all I’d been through and I deserved a treat. (These are the things I told myself). 

Once you get derailed it is very hard to set yourself straight again, especially when you are happy with your body image and health. So very slowly over the next 2 years the weight came back and for my husband several health problems returned as his diet changed back slowly in many ways to previous bad habits and comfort foods.

It wasn’t a total reversal, there are several foods and snacks we do not eat, especially processed foods. But what we have learned is there are certain foods that pack the pounds back on.

Breads and gluten, dairy and all forms of sugar, especially. I went back to baking cookies and eating desserts. We went back to eating bread occasionally, in “healthy” sandwich form or on hamburgers. Small compromises became bigger compromises over time. I still cook healthy but only about 50% of the time and the other nights we get take out. I went back to drinking coffee with “healthier” creamers but still with sugar, I stopped eating breakfast. (I’ve never been much of a breakfast eater). It is truly the most important meal of the day. It is the meal that kick starts your metabolism and sets the foundation for fueling your body each day!

I have gained 82lbs back, which is more than I lost. My husband has gained 72lbs back which is about 75% of his loss. So here we are at the beginning of 2018, a New Year, ready to start all over again! This time armed with all the knowledge of our past mistakes. Knowing what its like to get down to a weight and healthy feel we enjoyed and could be proud of and then losing all of that, again! (For the 7th time!)

 

We swore we wouldn’t let that happen again, we thought that armed with new knowledge and understanding regarding food we couldn’t fail. Yet we did. What we gained was more information which we will use this year and into the future to be more successful. We have an abundance of new recipes to add to our healthy eating plan thanks to Brittany, our biggest cheerleader! What I love about her recipes is the convenience and variety, all real food, delicious alternatives that don’t leave you feeling deprived.

 

“For a just man falls seven times and rises up again!” Proverbs 24:16a (That’s me!)

So with the start of a New Year, 2018 will be our do-over! Our time to “rise up again!” I want to encourage all of you wherever you are on your journey to better health, we can do this!

I will be working with Brittany to post monthly updates throughout the year of our journey with pictures and weigh-ins and stories about our journey. We know it’s harder losing weight after gaining it back, we know our bodies fight to be at that heaviest weight. We are inspired by our daughter and her success. We know we will have a whole community in this group full of support, encouragement and accountability partners. We also know how crummy it feels to lose so much weight and feel so good and have so much energy, just to completely let it all go! The feelings of guilt, shame and poor self image are real. I have to fight to overcome those negative thoughts and feelings of hopelessness to start again. But here we go! Success is ours in every bite we put in our mouth!

 

WEIGH IN REBECCA:
250lbs
Neck: 15
Bust: 44.5
Waist: 46.5
Hips: 56
Thighs: 30 & 31
Calves: 18.5 & 18.75
Arms: 15 & 15.25

WEIGH IN DAN:
299lbs
Neck: 18.5
Chest: 55.5
Waist: 54.25
Hips: 53
Thighs: 29 & 30
Calves: 17.5 & 18
Arms: 16.75 & 18

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