Health and Fitness

A little background on this one first:

I’m 32 years old and was diagnosed as a Type 2 Diabetic in March 2009. Despite efforts to exercise more, eat better, and lose weight, I’ve in fact gained 15 lbs. since then. The good news is that I’ve been able to drop my Hemoglobin A1c levels (a blood test that measures the % of sugar in your blood) from 10.6 to 7.2 in 9 months with the help of dietary changes and two medications, Januvia and Actos.

I’ve been overweight since the 4th grade for the most part. It only got to be really bad once I hit high school. Since then, the lowest weight I’ve been at is 220lbs. On my 5′7″ frame, that’s about a size 16. I fought hard, worked hard, and no matter what, could not break that point. As is often typical (which kills me to say), stress and frustration got the best of me, and I regained all I’d lost and then some. You’ll see the exact weights as I go along weekly, in the blog posts.

It had me to a point where I was a semi-finalist for the hit reality show The Biggest Loser. Twice. I never made it onto the show, but I made it both times to the final round of where they chose the actual contestants, and I was eliminated.

You might wonder why I’m putting this all out here now, what’s got me to the point where I’m feeling that dedicated.

As I mentioned before, I’m currently 32 and diabetic. I’m also single and childless. I can’t do much about the age thing, but I can “reverse” the diabetes (and all the other side effects of being overweight), increase my chances of being hit on (giggle) and make my body healthier now, for the time that hopefully comes along where God might bless me with a child.

Without giving away too much now, as I’ll be sharing much of it in the blog posts as we go along, I know that 2010 is going to be the year that I not only break past the 220 mark, but right on down into “Onederland” and situate myself at a nice, healthy and happy mid-100’s mark.

I’ll be tracking three separate measurements along this journey. My A1c levels, which get tested every three months, my actual pounds lost, and my dress size (see explanations below).

2010 Health and Fitness Milestones and Goals

Hemoglobin A1c Levels
The “healthy” range is between 4.0 and 6.0 (via WebMD), with the typical goal for diabetics to be under 7.0. Personally, I’m shooting for the gold here and am seeking below 6.0!
A1c level below 7.0
A1c level below 6.5
A1c level below 6.0 (high end of “normal” range)

Pounds Lost
-5
-10
-15
-20
-25
-30
-35
-40
-45
-50
-55
-60
-65
-70
-75
-80
-85
-90
-95
-100 (ultimate goal – may or may not be reached in 2010, but a girl’s gotta dream!)

Another way to measure my success is by my “dress size”. I’m currently shopping mostly at “plus size” stores like Avenue, so the goal is to get outta there and into “average size” stores first. Then, to shrink that dress size down further. The thing that must be noticed though, is that plus size stores often label their sizes a little differently than mainstream stores, so a “14″ at Avenue and a “14″ at Macy’s are going to be vastly different. We’ll see how that goes when I get there. The first goal is to just be too small to wear anything from stores like Avenue. I’m not sure which store I’m going to use to measure the “mainstream” size, but I’m sure you’ll read about it in the blog posts!

Dress or Jeans Size
Avenue 18/20
Avenue 14/16
Out of Avenue
mainstream 14
mainstream 12
mainstream 10
mainstream 8