I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, but this one takes the cake – well, OK not cake anymore.

I have a special saying for people who eat cake but I keep a close hold of that so I don’t offend anyone. Before deploying recently, I wrote two articles about fitness that were published here on the Marauder Online.

I e-mailed them to one of my friends to read. She liked them, but her first reaction was, “Well, what if someone says to you, ‘Who do you think you are? What makes you an expert?’”.

I guess I’d never considered that reaction, but I have since given it a great deal of thought. And trust me, when you go on super-long run Sundays, you have a ton of time for thinking.

I’ve never had a problem telling my story to anyone who asks how long I’ve been into fitness. But putting it into writing and pulling this picture out of its secret hiding spot is a level of sharing I never thought I’d get to.

Few have seen it, and even fewer around me knew me when I looked like this. As you can see, I was fat.

When Master Sgt. Sarah Frankenhoff was pregnant with her son she gained exactly 100 pounds. At her peak she weighed 236 pounds.

When I was pregnant with my son I gained exactly 100 pounds. At my peak I weighed 236 pounds. There’s just no good excuse for that. No one needs to gain that much weight when they’re pregnant. I was in a bad relationship and turned to food. It was the beginning of my obsession with food. It was so bad that the girls working at the local fast food joints wanted me to bring in my baby once he was born.

Yeah, we were that close.

After my son was born, I lost almost all the weight, only to start the great weight flux that I maintained for a solid nine years. I had gotten back down to 130 pounds at one point, but would get back up to as high as 180 then pull some off again. Two and a half years ago I finally decided that I was done with the reindeer games. I was tired of being a chubby girl.

That’s when I saw a couple of fitness magazines. The images and stories within them were the catalyst for me to say, “I can do that.” So I ran, and ran, and ran and ran. My goals got bigger as I got thinner and leaner.

Losing the weight isn’t necessarily going to make you like what you see. There are still a lot of times I step on the scale and cringe. It has to do with hitting the perfect weight, or more accurately, “the number” that signifies that perfect weight. That number is different for everyone. I remember seeing a girl who I thought looked perfect, and I asked her how much she weighed.

And so my association to “the” number became thinking that if I weighed that much, then I would finally think I look good.

I’ve learned the hard way that my body won’t give me the return I want at that weight. I want to be able to push myself through every training session so that I know at mile 80 on the bike and a marathon looming over me I have the ability to finish.

With a higher body-fat percentage, my endurance level is so much higher. Now, that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t still like to see that number (I think it’s a girl thing). It’s just another internal battle I’ll always struggle with.

So what inspired me to publicly humiliate myself on a global level by telling my story on the Marauder Online? I saw the advertisement in the gym for the “biggest loser competition” on base.

Ask anyone who knows me – I’ll give up any spare moment I have and talk someone’s ear off if they even so much as look like they want to question me about how they could lose weight and get fitter.

But it always ends the same way. My biggest pieces of advice are always the same, and I’m going to give it to you straight.

· Don’t start something you’re not prepared to stick with. Setting goals and not achieving them, or even coming close to achieving them, is a hard hit to take. “You gotta have buy-in. It’s 100 percent or nothing.”

· Losing weight is 80 percent diet, 20 percent exercise. You have to watch what you are shoveling down your yap. That’s right, party people. It’s time to put the pizza, burgers, fries and beer down. There’s a time and place for celebration, and it ain’t every night!

· Fad diets, low-carb lifestyles and fitness sold in a bottle are stupid ways to try and get to where you want to be. They just don’t work. Period.

· Find a workout partner. Use each other for support and motivation. I absolutely love knowing someone feels as miserable as me when I’m training!

What does work is getting off the couch. Put down that bag of chips and get out there and move. Find something you like to do. The fitness center offers a great variety of group classes to get involved in that have participants of every level.

US Air Force
Commentary by Master Sgt. Sarah Frankenhoff
100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs

Editor’s note: Master Sgt. Sarah Frankenhoff is the 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs Office superintendent. She’s an endurance athlete who competes in marathons and triathlons. Her most recent event was Ironman UK which consisted of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike and a 26.2-mile run.