Tracey Dafoe – Follow My YMCA Story
I wanted to share My Y Story a while ago, so with the permission of My Y, I started a blog. Here is the first post from the beginning of this year:
So, in an attempt to improve my health for good this time, I am going public! Public, that is, with my own personal fitness and weight loss journey…..
My Y story actually all began a few years before I joined the Y. I got pregnant. I know! Many weight gain stories begin this way and mine isn’t much different. I started eating everything the books told me to eat (and continued to eat everything I had always eaten). A miscarriage, 20 pounds, another pregnancy, 60 more pounds and nine months and one week later I had a beautiful baby girl. The healthy part for her would come later, but that’s another story. With us living outside of Belleville and my husband commuting to Ottawa daily, it only made sense for him to take a job in Toronto where the commute from the Northumberland area was only 1.5 hours instead of 3 each way. So, when the baby was nine months old, we moved to the area where the Y part of my story begins.
When we moved, I knew no one and my husband was gone 14 hours a day. I needed some place where I could meet people, take the baby and lose the baby weight. That’s where the Y came in! I dropped my baby off at playcentre and took class after class mainly because I didn’t have any idea what to do upstairs nor did I know anyone up there either. A few months after we joined the Y, the fitness instructor certification course was offered. I figured what better way to meet people by teaching classes, not to mention; now I would HAVE to come to the classes if I was teaching them.
Fast forward 10 years (and another baby 7 years ago); I have been a volunteer at the Y since a few months after I joined, a staff member in the conditioning centre for the past five years and have my individual conditioning, cyclefit, yogafit, group fitness and Pilates certifications. I am always continuing my fitness knowledge with courses, reading and training. I am the fittest I have ever been……
However, I still haven’t lost the baby weight….still almost 60 pounds to go and 10 more to get me into a healthy BMI (more on BMI in another post). My goal is not to fit into a certain size clothes or look like someone in a magazine. I just want to be as healthy as I can.
I started my journey (again) when the Y Body Shop competition began in late October. Since then, I have lost 7 pounds and 6 inches and went up over one level on the beep test. I have increased my workouts and even though I already eat mainly healthy, changed my eating habits and portion sizes. To follow my blog go to: http://followmyymcastory.