Hi, this is Petrina Hamm and I'm gonna tell you about my weight loss story.
Once upon a time I actually weighed 240 pounds.
It was really hard to find a before shot of me because quite honestly I didn't like being
photographed and for good reason.
This is me at 240 pounds.
I wish I could say I had some aha moments, a grand time or place where I said 'this is
enough.
I really want to lose weight.
I want to be healthy', but unfortunately that's not what happened.
So there was no true aha moment where I realized 'gosh, I'm terribly unhealthy.
I feel horrible.
I should just lose some weight'.
What happened was I was living with my little sister who became convinced that Atkins was
the way to go as far as diet went and she wanted me really badly to get on it with her
to help out, otherwise she'd have all these foods that she'd be tempted by.
So I said okay because I'm always ready and willing and eager to help and before I knew
it, the first week went by and I wound up losing 8 pounds in 7 days, which for me was
remarkable.
I never really set out to lose weight before and from that point on I was totally hooked
with the concept.
So much so that I ended up doing hard core Atkins, which is induction levels and that's
where they only allow you to eat 10 net carbs a day.
Just to give you an idea of what 10 net carbs a day would mean, 10 net carbs would be this
serving of one of my favorite side dishes, which is jasmine rice.
This is 10 net carbs here.
Not really filling as you can see.
This apple would actually be 16 net carbs, so I wouldn't be able to eat a whole apple
in a day.
Half of this red potato would be 10 net carbs so that would be my allotted carbs portion.
No more carbs for the day, which would mean basically no more vegetables.
No more pretty much anything with the exception of meat, fish, poultry, steaks.
You know, the basic staples of the Atkins diet.
Half of this banana would probably be about 10 net carbs.
So this Arnold sandwich thin, flax and fiber, which is one of my favorite things to eat
for breakfast in the morning with some scrambled eggs whites.
This is 16 net carbs so this is another item where I wouldn't be permitted to eat it all.
I could probably have half of it and have 8 net carbs and then try to squeeze in another
2 net carbs somehow in the day.
So that gives you an idea of how crazy hard it was just to really stick with Atkins, which
I did.
I think I maybe had 5 cheat days throughout the year, depending on if it was Thanksgiving
Day or my birthday.
I'd allow myself some cake, but otherwise it was 'can't eat more than 10 net carbs a
day'.
Stuck with it for a year.
I lost a little bit over 90 pounds.
Shortly before hitting my goal weight I met my now husband who is a total fitness buff
and while I was doing Atkins, I didn't really do too much exercise.
I did do I think it was Leslie Sansone's Walk Away The Pounds DVD, which is something that
was very, very simple to do and it is what it sounds like.
You literally just walked in your living room and did very simple steps.
Now I look at that and I laugh.
I probably wouldn't break a sweat doing the workout tape 5 times consecutive, but with
his encouragement and support I started working out.
I did the running.
I did my first 5K while we were dating and we fell in love, we got married, we blended
our two families together and decided that maybe we should have another one.
So in doing that, I faced every woman who has lost a significant amount of weight what
their greatest fear would be and that's pregnancy.
Pregnancy is scary when you've lost a lot of weight.
I mean, this was taken probably a week before my youngest was born.
I gained probably 50 pounds during the pregnancy and going to the midwife's office weekly towards
the end and seeing my weight, I think you could hear like Jaws music playing in the
background as you're stepping onto the scale.
It is frightening and as that scale got closer and closer to 200, which when I lost weight,
I never thought I would more than 200 pounds again.
Ever.
I will never be that person.
So stepping on the scale and seeing it get closer and closer to that number, it's just
so incredibly frightening.
I did manage to keep active throughout the pregnancy.
I think I was walking at the YMCA nightly up until probably the night before I delivered
Stella so I did keep active, but I scaled it back a lot from what we had been doing
and as soon as I hit that 6 week mark after delivering Stella, I wanted to dip right back
into it and get back into pre-pregnancy shape as quickly as possible and because of that,
my husband and I chose to do, da-ta-da-da, P90X, which is an incredibly effective program.
It's what got me really hooked on BeachBody.
It helped us too because we didn't really have the time having a newborn with three
other kids after Stella was born to get to the gym and it was nice to be able to suspend
our gym membership and save ourselves a few bucks in the long run by getting the P90X
system and just doing workouts at home.
Since there's strength training in there with cardio and weights we just really got a well
rounded workout program after Stella was born and I was able to lose the 50 pounds I had
gained during pregnancy and get back the tone and the muscle that I had been used to before
having Stella, which was a beautiful thing.
Because of that too, you know, getting hooked on BeachBody, I wanted to do another BeachBody
program shortly after we finished P90X.
So we jumped onto Turbo Fire!
Turbo Fire is a great, great cardio, high intensity interval training program, but these
aren't the only 2 programs that BeachBody has.
They have a number of other ones.
There's Body Gospel, which is the first faith based workout program.
There's Slim in 6.
There's 10 Minute Trainer for those who are really short on time and have to squeeze in
10 minutes.
I know it's hard to get workouts in when you're balancing work and family or even when you
just have work on your plate.
Some people work 10-12 hour days, so a 10 minute workout program is pretty smart to
have around.
There's Turbo Jam Too, which I think is a lighter version of Turbo Fire and I'm about
to do Insanity in a couple of weeks and I'm both excited and scared about it, but it's
gonna be so much fun!
I'm so looking forward to it.
So here's the thing.
There's really no magic program that works for everybody when it comes to weight loss.
You really just have to think about what would work for you.
Atkins, I don't want to knock it.
It helped me to lose 90 pounds, but realistically, I couldn't keep up with that for the rest
of my life.
So after meeting my husband and starting to exercise, I just tried to incorporate a more
well balanced diet and when I'm able to have things like more than a little patty of jasmine
rice or I can eat an entire apple, I can eat an entire banana.
I can eat an entire red potato or 2 or 3 and not have to obsess over it, which is a wonderful
thing.
When you're on a weight program obsessing over things does not make for a very fun day.
But that's my weight loss story.
The very short portion of it.
If you yourself are trying to embark on a weight loss program or you're trying to get
into a fitness program, you're already in shape, but you just want to challenge yourself,
let me know.
Drop me a line.
Go to CoachPetrina.com.
You can also find out about all the wonderful BeachBody products and you can find out a
little bit more about me.
There's a Facebook link.
There's my email link.
There's also my cell phone, which you can text me on.
Thanks for listening!
Have a great day.