Kim’s Journey

We all have a story, and honestly, it’s powerful. I think sometimes we don’t think anyone really cares, but that’s not the truth… your story has power… the good of it and the bad of it… it’s what you do with your story that counts.

Why do I tell my story? Because it’s real… it’s real life and it’s not always pretty, but it’s real and I believe that my story will help others heal and change and make a difference in their lives. So here goes.. hang on.

Many people have asked me when was the moment that I decided I needed to change. I’ve always known that I needed to change the health aspect of my life, and I always wanted it, but it was hard to do it. So many times I failed, and would give up disheartened; crying in my closet and thinking I was doomed to  always fail.  I would give up and go back to eating unhealthy and not trying, because I just didn’t know how to make it happen. But for me there was a moment… a moment that literally rocked my world and changed my life and I realized if I didn’t do something drastic and really change I was going to loose everything I held most dear.

Okay, are you ready to hear me get vulnerable? Are you sure… because I wear my heart on my sleeve and I share the real truth… because I know all of us have these deep secrets that hurt and suck and wear on us.. and we feel that we are alone… and that’s not the truth.. you aren’t alone.. I promise. So I am going to share the real “why” so that you can know that this is possible for anyone, including YOU!!!!

My story

I grew up an athlete. I played multiple sports in high school and even played some college softball; I was always active and pretty in shape, but as it is with most athletes, once you get out of organized sports it’s hard to continue being as active as you once were.  As life goes on, you continue to eat the way you are used to, but since you aren’t active anymore the weight just seems to pack on, and before you know it you aren’t the person you used to be. Pretty much this is my story and how it started.

I also had to “grow up”; I got married, started my own business, Kimberly Jarman Photography, and started a family. Owning a business, on top of being a mom and wife is very stressful and I quickly allowed those things to consume my time and priorities. I had a hard time finding time for me and my health. Once I stopped being as active as I was, it was hard to keep the weight off.

I remember the last time I tried to “diet”, I think it was a combination of weight watchers and basically just trying not to eat to keep my calories down. I lost a little weight and then hit a patch AGAIN where I didn’t care; as always the weight started creeping back again. I’ve always been an emotional eater so whenever things got hard I started eating the cake and ice cream again. I remember standing in my closet and looking at my “goal” pants, a size 6 pair of slacks that I had picked up a couple years earlier, knowing that in a different lifetime I had been that size once and figuring if I bought them and hung them in my closet one day if wear them again. After that last “failed” attempt Iremember telling myself, “Kim, you’re too old now and your body just won’t ever be able to fit into clothes that small again, get used to it and deal with it. This is the smallest you’ll ever be”. At that point (the smallest I had been in awhile) I think I was fighting a 10-12 size and I was just going to have to be “okay with it”. I was settling because I couldn’t handle failure anymore.
The problem with settling, when you don’t really have a concept of a healthy lifestyle, is that things don’t just get better. I didn’t consistently workout and I continued to eat how I wanted; slowly and surely I started gaining the weight again. Later that year I found out I was pregnant and I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life, going into a pregnancy ~ awesome!!!!

During my pregnancy I didn’t care. I felt like crap. I was out of shape, so working out just hurt, and I ate what I wanted because I could – I was pregnant!!! At the end of my pregnancy I was huge. I was over 200 lbs and climbing still. Never ever ever had I been this big and I was depressed.

I love my babies (I now have a 7 year old girl and my 19 month old baby boy), they are amazing, but the things they did to my body and the emotional craziness that comes with a pregnancy was too much to handle.

THE TRIGGER

As of today, my husband, Jamie, and I, have been married 12 years. We’ve always been close and I never thought that anything could ruin our marriage… we had a relationship built on God and had an amazing family; life looked great. However, 2 days before our son was born, some things happened that made me realize that our relationship wasn’t truly what I thought it was…on the outside things looked good… but now looking back I see that we had been moving apart from each other. All marriages have their rough spots, but I always believed that nothing would be able to break ours a part; what I didn’t ever see coming, was how easy it is to get side tracked and to “forget” what is important.

When you aren’t working on your marriage, and you allow yourself to get distracted, it will affect the people that you love and will make you do things that you didn’t think possible. We had allowed ourselves to stop being a team, we had allowed other things to take the place of each other. I had found out that my husband had made some pretty poor decisions that was affecting our marriage in an extreme way. It rocked my world and made me do a lot of thinking. It made me sit and think about what was important in my life and was it worth fighting for.  Our marriage was literally at a crossroad – a very important intersection that would determine if we stayed together or moved further away from each other. We both had to make a decision and some serious changes if we wanted to save our marriage. I was bound and determined to do my part and as time passed, I knew my husband felt the same.

THE WHY

My trigger made me do a lot of thinking. I had to really figure out what was important to me. For me, my why was my Family. I was not going to allow anything to take my family away from me. I wanted to be fully there for my kids and I wanted to be fully there for my husband. I HAD to change my health, not only to loose weight, but for the mental aspect as well. I wanted to feel more like myself… I wanted to look in the mirror and see the person that I knew was there…the person that so many people didn’t even know since I had been so heavy for so long. I wanted the confidence I once had in who I was back.

I hated who I saw in the mirror and, as a wife, did not in any way feel sexy or confident. I knew that one way to save my marriage was to put  more effort into being healthier and be able to give the gift of a confident woman to my husband once again. However, as much as it was super important for me to do this for my husband, I also knew that I had to make a change for my entire family.  Mentally, as a mother, I was a mess too… I didn’t have the energy to do things with my little girl and was always cranky.. I had a hard time keeping up with my daughter when she would do sports and that made me really sad. Being pregnant, and knowing I was going to have a little guy come into our life, as well as face postpartum after pregnancy, changes had to be made… and fast.

A Trigger is something that can push you to make a huge change in your life, but it shouldn’t be the only reason why you change. I had wanted this change for a long while, before I realized our marriage was almost in shambles, but the trigger mentally pushed me to a place I hadn’t been able to get to before. It gave me a reason to change. I realized that this couldn’t just be a fad diet if I was going to have success, it had to be a life change because so much was riding on it. I wasn’t going to go back to the person I was before. My Family was too important for me  to fail.

MY JOURNEY

So, 6 weeks after having my son I put my EVERYTHING into becoming healthy. Not being on a “diet” and just losing weight, but a lifestyle change. I wanted to do it the right way and find a way that would last forever. I gobbled up everything I could find on health. I talked to friends, coaches, health people, the internet and I dedicated everything I had to change.

My journey really started when I found my amazing Beachbody Coach, Jenn. She opened my eyes to a whole new world of nutrition and eating clean. She answered so many questions and through her challenge groups showed me how to make this a lifestyle and not a diet. I started with eating. I cut out all processed foods and sugars. I threw away all the crap we had in the house and started eating “clean”. I changed the way my family ate and the way I thought about and looked at food.

Next I joined Orange Theory. For me personally, I’m motivated by going to a gym and having someone help me in my workouts and push me harder than I think I can. So, while I LOVE the workouts that Beachbody has and I know they work, I needed to do something that worked for me.  I had taken a class at Orange Theory a couple years earlier to see what it was like. It was hard, like really hard. I felt stupid because I couldn’t do what others around me were doing, but I also felt challenged and had liked what I went through. At the time I hadn’t been ready to commit to that change, but this time I was. I took another free class and again struggled through it – I had just had a c-section and was super overweight, so it was hard- but I knew that it would change my life if I stuck with it. So I signed up. I committed to going and making it a part of my lifestyle. I made it a permanent spot on my calendar and it became habit that I made sure happened. 4-5 times a week I committed without fail.

Within a year I lost 85 lbs and about 15% body fat. I’m wearing a size 4/6, which I’ve never worn in my life. I have muscle definition that I didn’t know was possible. In college I was in really good shape, but I’m in better shape now at 36 years old and 2 kids later. – Remember those “goal” pants… the ones that were hanging in my closet…the ones that made me realize I would never be in shape again??? Yup… those pants don’t fit anymore, but they aren’t too small, they are actually now too big!!! Woohoo!!!

This journey changed my life. It’s a lifestyle change and I plan on keeping it forever. I look at life differently, I don’t put crap into my body and I make sure I push hard at the gym. I feel better and am better because of it. I’m a better mom, wife, friend, and business owner because of it.

MY HOPE

I believe that God allows things to happen for a reason. I would never wish upon anyone what happened to my marriage, but I am so blessed and thankful that God allowed us to go through this journey because he has restored my marriage to something better than it was. We are more focused on each other and our family. We are both focused on our health and focused on doing it TOGETHER – not apart. We are also focused on trying to help other people in their own journey, whether it be an individual who just needs someone to help them reach success, or a couple who wants to do this together.

I am vulnerable and share this with a little bit of anxiety because it is a personal story; however, It’s a story that I thank God for because I couldn’t have gotten through it without Him right next to me. It’s a story that I pray will help others in some way, whether just in motivation or in true life change.

I want to tell everyone this story because I know I’m not the only one who’s been here before. I know many have given up and don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. You can do it. I know you can. If I was able to do it, you can. It’s gonna take change and it’s gonna be hard, but you’ll be so glad you did it.

 

A Journey is ongoing and throughout this site Kimberly will be sharing more of her journey. Feel free to look through all of this great information, but don’t forget that accountability is key, so signing up for a challenge group is really one of the best ways you can reach your health goals. During our challenge groups we will be there to help you each day along your personal journey.

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