Steph's Story: This Is My Fight Song

Heyyyyyyy and welcome to our blog! Megan and I are super excited that you're reading this (and we hope we don't scare you away)! We met while teaching together and quickly became best friends and swole sistas based on our combined adventures in teaching and a desperate need to somehow get our frustrations out. Rather than saying what we REALLY thought to our dear students (out of love, of course) we started working out together. Long story short, we both decided to leave our teaching jobs at the end of the 2014 school year and here we are, living over 200 miles apart and trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.

This blog is going to be all over the place, which is only fitting for us. We'll talk fitness, fashion, books, lifestyle, career paths, internet humor, and maybe even a little about sports (Meg) and motherhood (moi).

Now buckle your seatbelts and keep your hands and arms inside the rollercoaster at all times. Hope you're tall enough for this...

So first, my little backstory.

I have struggled with my weight since about, oh, second grade. That's when my first crush didn't like me back (thanks Philip) and my grandmother fed me cookies to patch up my seven-year-old broken heart.
Then my grandpa would tease me about gaining weight, and I'd cry, so good ol' grandma would make me feel better with the help of her best girl, Little Debbie.
'Twas a vicious cycle.

Fast forward a decade and I'm graduating from high school in a size 22 with little to no understanding of how calories work. It was NOT cute, I was NOT happy, and I was NOT interested in doing anything about it other than hate myself. I was miserable, and I used food to comfort me. Diagnosis: Classic case of eating my feelings. Apparently, they were delicious. 

The around my junior year, something just clicked and my inner voice shouted "Get it tagethah, gahlfren!" in her best Brooklyn/Boston accent. I finally realized that I wanted more for myself and that I was capable and worthy of much, much more. I started going to the rec one day a week watch out nah and walking the LSU lakes with a good friend.

Sidenote: Collegiates. If you have an amazing, FREE rec center available to you, USE IT. If you happen to be lucky enough to attend the great Louisiana State University, WHY ARE YOU READING THIS INSTEAD OF WALKING/RUNNING THE LAKES. For shame. 

I mean really.

So I lost some weight, met this amazing guy, graduated from college and gained some love lbs (you know what I'm talking about. You get comfortable in a relationship and ya let yaself gooooo). When he proposed to me on Valentine's Day in 2010 awwww I buckled down again and lost some more weight with a feeble attempt at running and learning karate from a one-armed Vietnam veteran...but that's a whole 'nother story for a whole 'nother post. 

That smile though.

Now about that feeble running attempt. I had read about the Couch to 5k app in Mama Laughlin's blog and I decided to give it a try. I remember my first 15 second jog... I thought I was going to die and they'd find my body lying on the side of the road. I'm not even kidding. But 15 seconds by 15 seconds, I slowly ended up being able to run 20 minutes without stopping. Then, almost a whole 5k race. And then seven and a half miles...I felt like a BAMF to say the least. (More about my life as a runner in a future post, promise!)

And then, in 2012, the hubs and I decided that we were pretty great and there needed to be more greatness in the world...so I got pregnant. And HANGRY like you wouldn't believe.

And gained 82 pounds.

Eighty. Two. Pounds.

I'll let that sink in.

Womp womp. No, it's not twins. 

Rascal Mae was born on May 4th, 2013... 7lbs, 12oz. She was perfect and pink and girly and wonderful. But once the fog of "did I really just become a mom" wore off, I was like WHADDYA MEAN SHE WEIGHS LESS THAN EIGHT POUNDS?!?!? 

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As soon as I recovered from the c-section, I started running again, joined a gym, and have dropped 86 pounds in 16 months.

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And here I am today: looking honestly the best I've ever looked in my entire life and damn proud of it...

...and I'm not done yet. This is my fight song.