About Me

Hi!

My name is Shanti – it means “peace.” My life is busy, and full of creativity and doing :) I’m 25 and I currently live in Anaheim, CA, although I am from Seattle, WA. I am actively losing weight and – somehow or another – video-blogging (vlogging) about it in the process on YouTube.

I started losing weight in January, 2008, at 218.3 lbs (my highest weight ever was 230 lbs in 2004), and I set myself my First Goal of losing 58.3 pounds so I would weigh-in at 160 pounds. A hefty goal, indeed! But, after much labor and learning, struggle and failing… and a lot of healthy eating and exercise, I reached my First Goal of weighing 160 pounds on June 13, 2009! It was glorious… but the journey wasn’t about to end there.

After hitting my First Goal, I spent two weeks weighing 159 pounds, with my lowest weigh-in ever recorded at 158.8 lbs (light!). I then became more apathetic (perhaps over-confident?), and lost a lot of my drive to keep working at losing weight.

I spent a year bouncing around in the 160′s range (from about 162 to 168 lbs – rarely above or below). Then in June, 2010, I finally found a life/work balance that afforded me time to work on my eating and exercise again, and so I dove back into serious weight-loss once more - firstly to get back to my First Goal (160 lbs) and then secondly to attain my Dream Goal of 150 lbs. My dream goal is  around 150 lbs because it’s a healthy mid-normal weight for my height, and it would also make my weight-loss a nice, round 80 Pounds Lost! :)

Since July, 2010, I have been working toward my final weight-loss ambitions with a new “structure” for my weight loss; instead of a diet, simply an outline of how I should approach my health. My current plan is as follows:

1. Eat losing-weight to maintain-weight calories every day (1300-1900 calories/day)
2. Make healthy choices within my calorie parameters (eating fruits & veggies, sprouting, juicing, “clean” eating, etc.)
3. Exercise 3+ times/week to improve my overall fitness and health, and to lose fat off of my body

(Step three is always changing. I will be increasing my exercise to 10 hours of exercise per week slowly over the next year.)

Throughout this entire process, I have recorded my journey on YouTube. In my videos, I cover healthy eating, exercise, and balancing your life while losing weight and becoming a more healthy person. As I’ve gone along losing weight, I’ve shifted to eating clean* (or as I used to call it, “non-processed”), all organic, whole foods and it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Learn more about my plan…

My Weight Loss Progress

Start Weight: 218.3  -  Jan 2008
Lowest Weight: 158.8

Current Weight: see latest videos (160′s)

New Goal Weight: 160

Dream Goal: 150 (would be a total of 70 lbs lost)

I’m about 5’9” tall.

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* Clean, Non-Processed, and All-Natural diet titles all intend to mean, in my opinion: no artificial ANYTHING in your food. This means no artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, or artificial preservatives. This basically means you eat nothing from the SAD CRAP** diet but find healthy alternatives or replacements for all the unhealthy food you used to eat. For many, eating a “Clean,” “Non-Processed,” or “All-Natural” diet also intends to mean eating organic food, and for some it means eating mostly or only raw food – but not all people eating a clean diet go that direction.

** SAD CRAP: the Standard American Diet of Carbohydrates and Refined, Artificial, Processed food

See my FAQ’s for tons on info on all I’ve done and how you can start!