Little steps..

I wanted to start talking about a little about myself first and how I decided to blog on HealthyGamer.

My friends in the gaming world know me by gentlestar, I grew up with 2 older brothers so I’ve always played games.  It wasn’t until I met my future husband, known to the internet as Zap-Robo, that I really got involved in online gaming.  We were involved in a long distance relationship for 8 years and spent most of that time gaming together.  City of Heroes will always be our home and so far nothing has replaced it.  The screenshot above is actually the very last one taken before the servers died and many tears followed.  We started getting involved in WildStar which is where I met a lot of my current gaming friends and where my gaming world expanded.

Sitting around so much was making me feel bad and I want to have a long life with Zap, enjoy being married and just enjoy life as much as I can. Two years ago I really started getting into working out; was getting up to an hour on our elliptical, I had just bought a personal trampoline to work on cardio and then I found out we were having our little Zapling.  Now he is my pride and joy, but I stopped working out and just let things slide.  I never gained much weight through the whole pregnancy so I never felt motivated to workout while I was pregnant.  After the birth, time flew so fast that I felt like I didn’t have 2 minutes to myself to do anything.  I had started getting a little down when, 6 months ago now, my mother passed away. She was my rock and I couldn’t imagine raising a baby without my mom there to help me.

I know I have Zap, but there are just some things you need to ask someone that has raised kids.  Everything just shut off inside and although I tried to keep a positive outlook and make sure to be happy around the baby, I did get depressed. There was a part of me that wanted to give up, even though I knew I couldn’t.  Being strong for the baby and my wonderful hubby being incredibly supportive kept me going.  I knew before anything happened I wanted to raise our Zapling healthy.  The loss of my mom just set that in stone.

With my mother dying of a sudden heart attack, my father with a stint in his heart from a heart attack and both my grandfathers passing from them, I knew there had to come a point when I looked at myself. I had to force myself to see that if I kept going this way and not getting out of my funk, that my baby could end up motherless too.

I don’t want to see that happen so a few weeks ago I started making better choices in what I ate. A slow start but instead of having fries and burgers at Wendy’s, I was picking salads and baked potatoes with butter.  That little step led to more steps and after two more weeks I was feeling better and doing better.

Then came the time a few days ago to get back onto the elliptical. Embarrassing as it sounds, I was only able to do 10 minutes on the first day which led to tears.  I wanted to give up on everything but I know I couldn’t because of the baby so through the tears I fought for those 10 minutes.

Those 10 minutes so far has turned into 3 days straight and today I was actually happy and wanting to get on it again. So before work I did a little and tonight I’m going for 15 minutes.

There comes a time when you have to fight for yourself and get yourself out of that funk.  I can sit around for hours playing games or watching TV, making excuses why I never was able to find time to work out.  Well if I can sit around and watch TV for a couple hours during someones naptime, then I’m pretty sure I can use the same time to work out instead.

For the first time in a long time, I feel motivated and I want to get healthy by setting that example to my son.  I have one life and I don’t know when my time will come, but I know I can extend it by just making simple choices and taking little steps that will lead to big ones.  So in my journey when I heard about HG, I knew right away I wanted to be involved.  This is a chance to motivate myself and set hard goals by putting things out there.  It might be a hard journey but I’ve met great friends that I know will be supportive.  I want to share this journey because everyone has a pain they have to fight and we can’t let ourselves be consumed by it.

I’m just putting it all on the line tonight,  yes I’m a big girl.. I weighed myself last night and I was 233 lbs. No, I don’t care if people know as it’s not like you will look at me and say “Oh, she’s 110 lbs”.  So my personal goal now will be 180 lbs, a loss of 53 lbs. I want to set a reasonable goal to get back to a weight where I felt healthy and great.

This isn’t a goal to make me a supermodel, it’s to eat healthier and live healthier. I plan on doing a weekly blog to keep everyone updated on my choices and workouts.  I figure if I put this out to the world that I will be forced to follow through.  I know I have support from friends and family.

I just want to make sure I’m here as long as I can be.