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I was once a VERY large person. This is my story:

In November 2001, I weighed 291 lbs. and wore size 26 clothes. I had been very overweight for about 8 years, after the birth of my first child. I had gone to the doctor the day before Thanksgiving for birth control and was shocked at what I weighed. I weighed 276 lbs. when I delivered my youngest child 2 years earlier and now I weighed 15 lbs. more!

The day after Thanksgiving 2001, I decided it was time to do something about my weight. It's not that I was inactive but I wasn't active enough and I ate way, way, way too much on top of that. I did not want to join a gym mostly because I had three younger children at home and I didn't want to have to cart them around nor did I want to pay for child care while I was working out. I had an elliptical machine at home so I started doing that 20 minutes every other day. I started watching what I ate a little more but I wasn't dieting.

I remember two things that stuck in my head as I ventured out on my journey to better health and fitness: Bob Greene on Oprah saying that you need to get your exercise going for 30 days before you start to add dieting to the equation. Also, Dr. Phil on Oprah telling all of us overweight people to find a hobby to replace eating.

After 6 weeks, I decided to try Tae Bo. I hated it at first but after three or four times started liking it. I would do 30 minutes on my elliptical machine one day and 30 minutes of Tae Bo the next day. I was working out 30 minutes 6 days a week and feeling great. By the middle of January 2002 I had already lost 18 lbs. So I started watching my diet even more, eating more vegetables and fruit and less sugar, bread, pasta, rice and junk food, and smaller portions.

In March I started running with a group of ladies from church. I would wake up at 5:45 three days a week and run/walk 3 miles. I continued to do Tae Bo on the alternate days. The first week or two it was all I could do to walk that far and starting to jog was something I had to work at. (I swore at one point when I was younger that I would never run again because I had run about 10,000 miles while playing basketball as a kid.) But I realized I enjoyed running and decided I would run a 5K race because I needed a goal to keep it up. I did my first 5K race in July and to date I have run a lot of 5 and 10K races and 6 half marathons.

In April, I started to see ads for a Curves gym opening up in Redmond and I was excited to try it out. I had previously belonged to

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