About

Hi, I’m Shannon – The Shrinking Mommy. Join me on my journey to lose over 100 pounds and get healthy and fit again.

First a little about me: I’m at work-at-home, homeschooling mom to four fun kids, ages 5, 7, 10, and 12 (as of 11/09). I’m married to a wonderful husband, who is very supportive of anything I do (thank you!!). 

I love to write, read, play in my garden, travel with my family, and hang out with my kids.

My Story: Once upon a time (over 15 years ago) I was fit and healthy. I walked a lot, ate healthy (still do, when I remember to eat), studied nutrition and fitness (still do) and it all reflected in my health. But changes to lifestyle, work, and putting everything else before my health, caused me to well… gain a lot of weight and get pretty sick.

The more I added to my world – kids, work, etc – the less I took care of myself. My world got really out of balance - working long hours, skipping sleep to meet deadlines, not exercising consistently, skipping meals and snacks, drinking soda to get through the day - it all ended up making me very ill.

In December of 2004, I quit my more than full-time, work-at-home job to go to part-time consulting and work on realigning my life and health again.

It’s been nearly four years since then (it’s Nov 2009 as I write this), and slowly I’ve been able to break the bad habits that I picked up  – priorizing sleep over work (oh that was hard!), remembering to eat (it took me a full year of conscious effort to get in the habit of eating something in the morning), and working daily movement back into my life. 

In 2005, at the beginning of that journey, I was diagnosised with hypothyroidism. When I finally was tested for a thyroid disorder, my TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) levels were  off-the-chart. The doctor had never seen them that high. Normal range for TSH levels is between.5 and 5 (depending on the lab it can also be .3 to 3); my results were 100!

I’ve been on thyroid medication since then and that has helped considerably at keeping the weight consistent, but still it’s been difficult to lose the weight. I’ve needed to address all the icky habits I’ve picked up over the years - grabbing a soda when I’m in a hurry instead of eating a quick nutritious snack, not eating until late in the day, putting work before sleep, skipping meals, you name it… I developed some pretty icky habits. 

But now I’m ready. Most of those habits have been conquered and replaced with healthy ones, and I’m ready to SHRINK!!!  Come join me on this next phase of my journey…