Introduction

So you've stumbled upon this blog claiming to give motivation and advice to achieving a fit lifestyle and you may be thinking who is this person claiming to have the answers to achieving the lofty for some, yet attainable for all goal of maintaining a healthy and fit lifestyle.  Well, let me first say, I will never claim to have the answers.  I simply hope to share my journey towards a fit life with you in hopes that some of what I discover may help or inspire someone else in their journey as well.  Still interested? Great! Allow me to introduce myself.

I'm Heather Hope, former middle school science teacher turned stay at home mom.  In middle and high school, I was a competitive swimmer, swimming several hours a day year-round.  Back then, it was easy for me to stay fit.  I was working out so much, I could eat whatever I wanted.  Everything changed for me my junior year of high school when my knees could no longer keep up with the stress I was putting on my body and I was forced to quit swimming.  All of a sudden, I was leading a much more sedentary lifestyle, but I didn't change my eating habits.  I very quickly began to gain weight.  By the time I left for college, I weighed over 200 pounds.  College brought with it the freshman 15 and then some.  This was when I started experimenting with fad diets.  I would try a new diet, lose a little weight, then gain it right back when could no longer maintain the food restrictions I put on myself.

After college, I moved across the country by myself, seeking out the freedom of living on my own.  Because I was on my own schedule and doing my own thing, I often skipped meals and hardly ever went grocery shopping.  I lived on Diet Pepsi, M&M's, and Cheez-It Crackers.  This tanked my metabolism, and I gained even more weight.  My boyfriend from high school and college moved in with me about a year later.  We tried to "clean-up" our eating habits, but without much knowledge and very little money, our fridge and pantry were filled with processed foods.  This was also when we started eating out regularly, a habit we still grapple with today.  I finally hit my wall after my wedding (to the high school sweetheart).  Upon our return from our honeymoon, I got my first glimpse of our wedding photos and was floored.  Yes I was a pretty bride.  I wore a beautiful dress and had the wedding every little girl dreams of, but that dress was a size 22, and I looked huge. It took something away from that day, the happiest day of my life up to that point, and still does when I look back at it today.  I knew I needed to make a change. I knew I needed help.   

All of the yo-yo, crash, fad diets I had tried in college left me with absolutely no confidence in my ability to chose the right foods to eat to lose the large amount of weight I needed to lose, so I signed up for Nutrisystem.  At least this way, the food was being picked for me. As long as I followed the plan, it should work, and it did.  With Nutrisystem and a significant amount of exercise (running and Zumba), I lost 70 pounds in 8 months. The problem was, the preservatives and sugar alcohols in the Nutrisystem foods made me feel awful, and after eating the same foods for 8 months, I was sick of their food choices.  It was time to figure out how to do this on my own, so I started to research clean eating and experimenting in the kitchen.

After gaining about 10 pounds back, I was able to maintain the rest of my weight loss until my pregnancy.  For reasons I will get to in another blog post, my pregnancy did not go as planned, and I gained more than 50 pounds.  I am now working my way back down to my goal weight through clean eating and exercise.  I hope through sharing my journey with you that I will be able to inspire and motivate others to begin, restart, or maintain their own path towards a fit life.