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| This is not me, but its a cool
picture! |
My name is Chelsea Robinson, and I am 35 years old. My
sister is Mary Baird, one of the coaches and co-founders of Little Healthy
Competition.
My journey to healthy living began almost 7 years ago, when
my toddler made a most shocking statement. I asked her what she wanted for
breakfast and she replied “No cereal, I just have cake.” Now, this may not seem
like a profound statement, but it would soon become the catalyst for a profound
change.
I first began to notice my weight at 15 years old, when I
stepped on the scale and it read 150lbs. From then on, my weight continued to
climb and fluctuated between 195-220lbs. my whole adult life, mainly because of
an uncontrolled ‘sweet tooth.’ It was not a rare occasion to have dessert for
breakfast. I would simply ‘skip’ breakfast and eat leftover dessert from the
night before. On this particular morning, my world came to a screeching halt
when I realized that I was passing my poor eating habits on to my daughter and
this is the legacy I was leaving her.
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| Yes, that's me. (Circa
1998) |
As a result of my weight struggle, I ‘hoped and prayed’
that my daughter would never have that same struggle. Maybe she would be more
like my sisters who always maintained a healthy weight. When I heard my daughter
that morning, I knew that I could not stay the same. I could not ask her to eat
a healthy breakfast and then hold myself to a different standard. So, the fight
to recover my health began.
My first step, ironically, came through following up on a
“Free Week at **** Gym” mailer. I didn’t go out right away and sign up for a gym
membership; I didn’t make huge commitments that I may or may not be able to
fulfill. I committed to one week, seven days. During those seven days, I would
go to the gym three times on my way to class, as I was in school at the time. I
asked my childcare provider if they could keep my daughter for an extra hour on
those three mornings and I went to the gym and did cardio. My journey started
small, with one baby step. Then, I added other small things: climbing on the
playground equipment with my daughter, swinging beside my daughter, crossing the
monkey bars (or trying to) with her….instead of sitting on the bench watching
her. I began walking with my daughter. I would get audio books from the
library, put her in the stroller around naptime and off we would go. I walked
while she slept.
At first, I did little to change my eating, because I
knew that once being active became part of my life, I would be able to tackle
the eating portion of my journey toward health. My first small step had been to
simply commit to eating appropriate meals: breakfast food at breakfast, lunch at
lunch and supper at supper. I didn’t limit the particular foods I ate (per se) I
simply tried to eat meals rather than snacks or sweets in place of meal. As a
result, the weight came off very slowly. At 6 months, I had probably lost about
10-15lbs. I was getting really discouraged and so I knew I had to begin to make
more dramatic changes in my eating.
So, my next baby step was to make my home a healthy
food zone. If I wanted to eat something sweet or unhealthy, I had to go out and
get it at that moment. When I went to the grocery store, I didn’t buy
junk food so it wasn’t in my home. It seems small, but it helped because I was
particularly vulnerable in the evenings…when my daughter was asleep and I was
alone. Well, any mama will tell you “Don’t wake a sleeping baby!!!” So, that put
a definitely halt to a lot of my ‘junk-food-trying-to-fill-a-hole-I-am-bored,
angry, tired, lonely’ eating. I lost eleven pounds in one month. As the
first year finished out, I continued to make small changes: fast food allowed
twice a week, bake brownies allowed once a week, stay away from Oreos and
Doritos (my two ‘eat them all in one sitting’ foods), etc. One by one, I began
setting boundaries that encouraged healthy living and resisted uncontrolled
eating.
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| And no, I really didn't want to
show you this picture. (Circa 1996) |
The next year, I
upped my commitment again and added running to my routine. Although I cannot say
that I made the decision to start running; I basically got dragged, dared and
otherwise coerced by MY sister and one of YOUR team leaders into running. She
was losing baby weight after her son was born and I was on a plateau with my
weight. We began running in Feb. without much thought to where exactly it would
take us. We both just wanted to increase our activity and become healthy
overall. One way to keep motivated was to set a goal—our first step was to enter
a race. So, we decided to do a 5K that was scheduled in April. One race and we
were hooked! The excitement, camaraderie and sense of accomplishment were
incredible. So, with my sister by my side, we ran the Race for the Cure in June
and the Turnip Patch Park 5K in Nov. With each race, we added a new goal—run the
whole distance without stopping, run a faster time, get under a 9:45 mile
average race pace, etc. By fall, we had increased our distances also and in
Dec. we ran our first 10K.
We never thought of ourselves as “real” runners;
we just realized very quickly the importance of short term goals and kept that
in our sights at all times.
(to be continued....you won't want to miss the AFTER
pictures!!!)
