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My name is Susanne Driedger I’ve been married to my husband martin for 14 years now ! So I’ll start from the beginning! I’ve always been into fitness since I was a young girl. As a teenager I tried to exercise everyday because it just made me feel good! And I also played many other sports, especially basketball and hockey! I could eat whatever I wanted and I always stayed really skinny. But that all changed when I got married … Martin and I moved to high level and martin was always on the Log truck so I just decided to always go with him so I didn’t have to sit at home alone. I became very depressed. Don’t get me wrong I loved being married and spending time with my husband but I think I started having a chemical imbalance in my brain that winter so I decided to start taking antidepressants. I had also taken up the bad habit of smoking when I was 16 and that was also a way for me to numb the depression and pretty severe anxiety that I’ve dealt with pretty much my whole life! I was on the antidepressants for 6 months and gained 50 pounds over that time, So I went from 120 to 180 in a span of about 6 months! I’m 5’2 so you can imagine how my body changed! This was one of the many side effects of the antidepressants, weight gain! I also struggled really badly with self image! When I looked at myself all I saw was this extremely ugly fat repulsive failure! My husband has always been into fitness and he takes care of himself and I was starting to feel like I was not even worthy of him and kept thinking to myself how he could’ve found a girl so much more beautiful than me and I felt like this was not the woman he married and he must be really disappointed that he’d picked me, I know looks aren’t everything but that was just what my mind kept telling me … but deep down I know my husband has always loved me no matter what because he’s such an incredible guy and if there is one thing I’m sure of now it’s that he loves me unconditionally, even through all of my failures! Anyways so I started going to the gym with him after his shifts, day shift, night shift, sometimes he’d be done at 2 in the morning and we’d go then! Well I just kept gaining weight and just sinking deeper into my depression! Most of the time I didn’t sleep because of severe anxiety, and the antidepressants I was on caused me to completely lose my libido ! I know, my poor husband ! Martin often wanted to do things with me like go swimming, and I simply refused because I felt so ugly! I think he was starting to get frustrated and one day he said to me, Susanne you have to accept who you are now so that we can have fun and start enjoying life again! He also told me he loved me the way I was and he wanted me to accept myself the way i was! ( I think he got tired of me whining and I sure don’t blame him, I was miserable!)That was it for me ! I didn’t want to accept my size and that’s when things started to change! I stopped taking antidepressants and started watching what I ate and exercising every day, sometimes twice a day! Every morning I would get out of bed and my mind would be screaming at me “life sucks, you can’t do this”, and every day I would fight those negative thoughts, I would keep telling myself life is good, i can do this! Some mornings I literally felt sick with dread for the day Ahead, but I just kept thinking positive and pushing out those thoughts! Martin pushed me every day, he was my biggest encourager! Slowly the weight started coming off! through all of this martin and I really wanted to have children, but it just wasn’t happening. 3 years after we got married I had a miscarriage, but that was it ! They couldn’t figure out why we weren’t conceiving and I struggled very much with thinking maybe I just wasn’t normal because I couldn’t have children. I had always wondered if I would have children because I wanted them so badly! I struggled so much because all my friends and my sister and sisters in law were having children. I always felt like an outsider… also I had tried to quit smoking our whole married life but I just couldn’t seem to let it go! I often blamed me not getting pregnant on the fact that I was smoking and that maybe God was punishing me for not being obedient! Obviously a lie! This addiction was a constant thorn in my side !But through all of this I kept going to the gym and exercising . Sometimes it was nothing but a severe struggle but I consistently kept at it ! I had finally accepted the fact that we werent having children and if God wanted us to have children, then it would happen and I finally let God take control of my life! In 2011 I reached my goal weight of 124 pounds !! I was 124 for 3 weeks when I became pregnant with our son Chayce . We had been married 7 years! I was able to quit smoking during chayces pregnancy but started smoking again after. I became pregnant with our daughter Lilly, and I was able to quit again. When I was 6 months pregnant with Lilly my father in law passed away when he crashed his plane! It was a hard blow to us all and I started smoking again to try and handle the stress , I hated myself so much for what I was doing to my baby but the addiction was just very strong and I couldn’t let it go ! I would often tell myself how worthless I was , what a terrible mom I was and that there was no chance for me to ever go to heaven for what I was doing to my babies ! I dealt with a lot of fear and anxiety that it was over and I had had my chances! I often had horrible fearful thoughts that would sneak into my mind that made me sick to my stomach with fear ! It seemed like I couldn’t control my thoughts anymore and it was causing me extreme anxiety and fear! Cassius was born 2.5 years after Lilly and then we had Gunnar 3.5 years after Cassius !! Through my pregnancies I tried exercising and watching what I ate but life got really busy and With constantly having to deal with my anxiety and fear i became tired and overwhelmed and often failed miserably!! I slowly started gaining a little extra weight with each pregnancy! Between Cassius and Gunnar I became pregnant with a little girl and lost her at 4 months pregnant! We named her Sophia Lynn . This was so very difficult for me ! During that time we were also having some family issues and I ended up in the hospital because I couldn’t take it anymore and they put me on some very strong medication! This numbed me but didn’t fix the problem! 2 months after we lost Sophia I became pregnant with Gunnar. That’s when I made the decision that I was done smoking and I finally managed to quit smoking at that time and have been smoke free since! I also went off the antidepressants because they were not good for the baby. Without my saviour I would’ve never been able to do it, but he gave me the strength I needed to finally quit for good! God helped to see that I was worth it and he still loved me even though I had failed him so miserably! He also helped me to gain more control of my thoughts and I was able to manage my anxiety a lot better! And it was amazing to be free from my smoking addiction and not have that dark cloud hanging over me anymore ! When I became pregnant with Gunnar I was still carrying some of the weight from my pregnancy with Sophia and gained another 37 pounds! That had me at 177 pounds again! After we had Gunnar I had only lost 7 pounds so I was 170 pounds! I was feeling so down about everything! I had to have a t cut ceasarean with Gunnar because there were complications and they told me I would never have another baby naturally again! This was very hard for me to accept because I had had my other babies naturally and knew that was a much better recovery than a ceasarean ! The healing process after Gunnar was painful and slow! When Gunnar was 3 months old I started exercising again but I felt so depressed thinking about what i would have to go through again to get back to my goal weight! Getting back into it was often very painful, I had a very bad experience with the nurses putting the catheter in while I was having my ceasarean, and it was causing a lot of problems for me physically! Every day I perservered even though I was challenged physically and mentally sometimes almost to the breaking point it seemed ! My biggest enemy was time, it seemed like I never had enough of it! When you’re raising 4 children newborn to age six, managing your household plus trying to help out at the gym, plus my hubby owns part of a logging company life can become extremely overwhelming ! Sometimes I just wanted to scream! But there is nothing that compares to how you can feel when you exercise and eat healthy. I started getting back my energy and I started seeing results ! Before I knew it my baby was a year old and my after picture looked a lot different than my before pic! That is soooo rewarding !! And ladies I want to emphasize! It’s not all about the number on the scale ! I’ve had a very negative relationship with my weigh scale but I am starting to see that the number on there only tells a small story! I’ve just come to realize over time that the best thing we can do is try to put on muscle because muscle burns fat ! And muscle weighs more than fat so if you’ve got a lot of muscle you will see a heavier number on the scale! You’re welcome to ask questions after if u don’t understand this
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