Meet Natalie! She is 20 years old. Majoring in psychology and minoring in criminal justice at Geneva College. She plans on going to grad school to become a counselor to help others. She loves to be outside (skiing, hiking and swimming). She also loves to travel and has been to 9 different countries (super jealous)! Natalie lost 45lbs. How? I'll let her tell her journey... "I grew up with my mom, dad and step mom. Three different parents with three completely different ideas of what being a parent meant. Due to my mom and dad working I spent most of my life starting at 8 years old with my step mom. My step mom means well but she is insanely strict and down right verbally and emotionally abusive. Due to being so young I felt that if I ever expressed my thoughts about her no one would hear me out. I was just a "young kid that needed to grow up" therefore I felt hopeless and kept my mouth shut and thoughts to myself until I was 17. With this feeling of hopelessness and honestly depression I never felt like I could control anything in my life. This depression which no one ever acknowledged transferred over to my body. Once I went through puberty I gained weight but nothing major. I was never the "skinny" kid but I never really thought about it nor did I care because I felt like I couldn't control anything and therefore didn't care about my body. This went on for years until my senior year of high school. My senior year of high school was when I decided where I would be going to college. This was super exciting because college meant I could finally be on my own and have some sort of control in my life. However I was still feeling depressed/unhopeful because I knew when I came home for breaks my family would still treat me the way they were and I would still feel hopeless. The fact that I would have to come home gave me constant anxiety and I soon didn't even care that I was going off to college. This sounds so cheesy but then Sam, my boyfriend, came along. Sam and I met at school and we're friends for months before we started dating. Sam is two years younger than me and we started dating a month before I graduated from high school. This probably sounds like a relationship that will never last but when your hearts in it and you trust in Gods timing you just have faith and know it will. Once I started dating Sam my feeling of hopelessness changed. I wanted to change my life because I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be happy for him and he couldn't force me to be happy the only person that could do that was me. Sam just gave me another reason too. I will forever thank Sam for giving me the courage to finally talk to my dad about all my feelings and gain some sense of control. Since that time things in my family/emotional life have greatly improved but I am still growing. Since my freshman year of college when I finally was starting to feel better I began to see and understand that I needed to treat my body better. I hadn't weighed myself in years and when I did I weighed 20lbs more than I thought I did. I never will forget that moment of being on the scale and realizing I needed to do something. I had always wanted to lose weight but never knew how or had the motivation to do it. Over the course of a year I lost about 10lbs by eating less and unfortunately with some bad habits like laxatives. The progress was slow and I knew I still wasn't trying my body right. I then stopped using laxatives and began to exercise more but I still ate poorly. I lost about 5lbs more. Then I started my junior year of college and was ready to really change. I knew if I didn't make a real plan I would never change. That's when I tried advocare because I knew the money I spent would keep me motivated and a day by day plan for about a month was the mindset that I needed. Once I stuck with advocare (which teaches you how and what to eat and that it's not a diet but a lifestyle change to treat your body right) I was literally forever changed. I didn't wanna go back to how I ate before. I could feel a real difference in my energy level and I was just purely happy. I had never felt this way before. I then wanted to do the same for others and now I help those who are interested in partaking in advocare or people that just want advice. I have lost a total of 45lbs. And the scale and a certain weight are not my goal. My goal is a healthy lifestyle of treating my body right. I eat protein and veggies which is exactly what God provided for us on this earth. Protein (animals) veggies (plants of the earth) therefore it should be no surprise that my body feels so great because I eat what God literally had provided for me. The biggest thing that keeps me motivated is my happiness. Who doesn't wanna be happy? With the help of Sam leading me along I never had more pf a reason to get control of my life so that I could successfully be apart of his. Also I am still growing in my life and there will always be room for improvement physically, emotionally, and spiritually for me. I am not done." - Natalie
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Author: Alexa Connerdaily coffee drinker, mother to plants, follower of Jesus. Archives
April 2019
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