My story

** I had pics up but took them down....they will be back up soon!!! Thanks for all the compliments though!! :)

All through my childhood until my freshman year of college I was super skinny. I went to college my freshman year and decided that I was not skinny enough so I crash dieted and lost 10 pounds. Because of my poor nutrition, this was not maintainable and I gained all the weight I had lost back, plus an extra 30 pounds over the next two years. For someone who had always been skinny and active, I was miserable in my own skin.My senior year of college I had to take a gym class where we wrote a paper about the goals we wanted to accomplish in the class. My goal was to lose weight. I am a perfectionist and since I wrote a whole paper on my goal, I had to achieve it. My sister, an avid runner, found a 8k that took place on Thanksgiving and convinced me to sign up for it. I also learned to control my portions a little bit and cut down on drinking that semester. By the end of the semester I had lost 5 pounds but I could definately see a difference. I ran that 8k on Thanksgiving in 45 minutes. I was so proud of myself but could never imagine running any farther.Throughout my senior year of college I lost a little more weight as I took up spinnning but was still not skinny by any means. I graduated and moved home, unemployed and bored. I joined a gym in my town and was instantly motivated by all the accomplishments of the people who went to the gym. I became a regular at the spin classes and took tons of cardio and strength training classes. I also decided to train for a half marathon.Throughout all this, I was slowly cutting back on my calories and weight was dropping off at a pretty decent rate. By September, when I ran my first half marathon I had lost 20 pounds since college and was feeling pretty awesome. I did not fuel myself properly during that time though and was exercising a few hours a day. I signed up for the Philadelphia half marathon with the goal of beating my time. I lost more weight before that race and trained harder and was able to shave 4 minutes off my time.I continued to run and decided I would run a spring marathon. My hours long exercise sessions and poor nutrition caught up to me in January when I was started having IT band problems. I refused to slow down and ran through the pain. I dropped more weight during this time and people started telling me I looked gaunt and not well. Being as stubborn as I am I still kept trying to lose weight and run through the pain until April when I knew my knee was just shot. I took off from running until the first week of June, gained 10 pounds back and am now waiting to start my marathon training on July 6. It is my goal to listen to my body and eat to fuel my running.Overall I lost 40 pounds since college, but since gained 10 back. I am now at a good weight for my height and of course would love to lose 5 more just for vanity reasons but I could lose 5 and still be at a healthy weight. I will not lose more than 5.