How to Love My Body: About Me

My name is Rachel Spencer, and this blog is about my goal to lose weight. When I first started trying to lose weight I weighed 285 pounds! It sounds like a lot... and it was.

I'm 26 and I have been married for two years! I don't have any kids, just 3 cats and a dog. I am currently in graduate school at Louisiana Tech, working on my MFA in Photography. Its time consuming and very stressful, but I am excited about the next two and a half years.

I love to read, cook, eat, watch TV, play with my dog and go to movies with my husband.

Back in May of 2008 my mom and I decided to go on Weight Watchers. I lost 20 maybe 30 pounds but it all came back. And if you have any experience with this yourself, you have probably done this as well.

Then I got engaged, and I went dress shopping, and I realized that I didn't like the way I looked. So like so many brides to be, I bought the dress a size smaller and lost weight to fit into it. Which is totally unhealthy and something I never should have done. I lost 40ish pounds. But it all eventually came back except for maybe 6 pounds or so. I never broke 280 again.

So that leads me to where I am today. Currently I am slowing working my way down to 125 pounds. I often fall off the band wagon and I did when I started grad school, but after my first quarter I'm determined to lose this weight. It literally weighs me down. I threw my back out in the beginning of the fall, and I know if I had been working out that I wouldnt have had it happen.

Around march I had started losing weight by doing Beachbody's Turbo Fire and drinking Shakeology. I had joined a challenge group but it eventually fell apart, and so after losing around 30 pounds I just got too busy and just stopped. I gained about 20 back and now I'm back at it. Like I said before, I keep restarting, when I first started I was 285, then I lost more and ended up staying around 279 for a while, and now I've been at 266 for a while, so I'm slowly losing it, gaining and losing but not gaining it all the way.

I have a ton more weight to go... but I'm committed to doing this. I write a blog just to help keep myself accountable, and also just for a place to talk about all this stuff. Its amazing how much better I feel when I can just talk about what's going on. It's one of my fitness goals to keep this blog, because it really does keep me on track.