Hi! My name is Angela (A.J. to my dad), & I'm 27, a recent law school grad, newlywed, & trying to figure out in which direction I want my life to go.
 |
| I'm on the right. ;) |
.
I'm currently living in Portland, OR with my husband & our awesome dog. We will be moving back to Western NY this summer, & I plan to use this blog to keep my weight loss efforts on track, as well as chronicle whatever seems to be going on in my life. Stick around, I hope it'll be interesting. :)
 |
| 2002 Senior Prom (far left) - 170ish lbs. |
That's me on the left in the orange dress, with the ginormous corsage (what were we thinking?!). Bigger than the girls I was friends with, & technically BMI obese - but hey, not so bad, if I do say so myself.
College was awesome, my first real time away from home & I loved making friends & hanging out. I went to Hobart & William Smith Colleges - a Liberal Arts school that was pretty much the best college ever.
 |
| 2006 College Spring Break (in the middle) - 180ish lbs |
I majored in Political Science & Public Policy, with a minor in Sociology, spent a semester in Washington, DC interning with a Senator & spent another semester traveling around Central Europe, studying politics with 5 week stays in Germany, Hungary, & Romania. Pretty darn cool.
I gained between 10 & 20 pounds depending on when you take pictures from, my weight consistently stayed around 180 unless I was trying some fad diet of the moment. I got lucky in college that my friends were pretty much all on the rowing team, so we didn't party too much & worked out a bit.
After college, I moved straight to Washington, DC - best decision of my life, in every aspect other than my weight. I was a paralegal at a large firm, shared an office with my closest guy friend, & met the greatest group of people, including my future husband. Isn't he cute?!
I'll write a post about him / us soon.
Basically, I had a blast for 2 years. I worked at big law firms, hung out with those awesome friends I made & took full advantage of all the city had to offer - went to museums, saw monuments, explored, tried restaurants & eventually ended up going to law school there.
 |
| 2008 Shamrockfest - 190 lbs. |
For a while there, I stayed around 190 pounds - about 20 pounds more than college, definitely feeling "fat" but only making half-hearted attempts here & there to lose weight.
Law school is where everything went haywire ...
In the summer of 2008, right before I was to begin law school my gallbladder had a breakdown. The doctors eventually blamed my birth control pill, I decided against having the gall bladder removed & instead went off the pills. It took a little bit, but eventually, my gallbladder went back to semi-normal function, its still a little slow sometimes, but it works, so whatever.
However ... the gall bladder issued caused trauma to my body which would take me 3 years, a million self & doctor diagnoses, an 80 pound weight gain, & a whole lot of frustration to figure out. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. After figuring out the gall bladder thing & going off the pill, I figured my other issues were just stress. I trained for a 5k & started eating very healthily & dropped 20 pounds during first semester - back down to my high school weight.
 |
| October 2008 (black dress) - 172 lbs. |
If you can't tell, I LOVE this picture of me - even though I'm still heavy (thank you black for slimming me), you can see my shape, I felt pretty okay / normal & things were going well.
It didn't stay like that for long ... I'll eventually write a longer post about all the symptoms I was feeling, but for now, there was just a whole bunch of random things that didn't seem to go together. I had an upper endoscopy, a test for stomach bacteria, additional gall bladder tests, thyroid tests, blood tests, a test for lactose intolerance. Basically, no one could really figure out what was going on.
By the summer of 2009, I had gained a little less than 40 pounds & was now tipping the scales at my height up to that point: I remember specifically weighing in at 207 around then.
 |
| September 2010 - 245 lbs |
I was still trying to squeeze my 5'2" 200 lb body into a size 14 - & believe me, it was NOT working. I took to wearing gaucho pants everyday (thankfully they were in style that year) because I knew I'd drop the weight.
Well, I didn't - 40 lbs became 60 pounds, which eventually became 80 pounds. I'll be honest, I wasn't doing much to help myself. I felt pretty discouraged by all of the tests & just knowing something was wrong but not being able to figure it out, that I just let myself gorge out on whatever I wanted.
Dustin & I got engaged in February 2010. I tried to lose weight, but it was really unsuccessful so I decided to hire a personal trainer. After our first training session, she told me she thought I had a gluten allergy & asked me to try a gluten free diet. (When I add the celiac symptoms post, I'll talk about how crazy I thought she was.)
Well, it worked! Unfortunately, I hadn't hired the trainer until very close to my wedding. So, even though I quickly dropped 7 lbs, I'm still pretty heavy in the wedding pictures.
 |
| May 14, 2011 - Fantastic Day - 235 lbs. |
We had an awesome "Minnie"-Moon in Disney World prior to my law school graduation & then took a "Full"-Moon post-bar exam in August to Europe. We then packed up our stuff from Buffalo, drove cross country & planted ourselves in Portland, Oregon - for
 |
| Side Shot - Wowza Wideness! |
about 2 weeks. Then we went to SE Asia for a month, followed by a short trip to Costa Rica, home for the holidays, & then back to Portland for good-ish in January.
January 5 is when I officially started my "weight loss journey" at 246.6 pounds. Since then I've lost 31 pounds, but have been struggling a bit this week, so decided now was the time to get on making a blog for inspiration!
I am open to any pieces of advice, comments, words of encouragement - pretty much anything positive, so send away! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment