Welcome! Figure Friendly Club, started on January 20, 2007, is a weblog dedicated to creating, maintaining, and living a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle is composed of many different elements.  Some of the elements that you’ll find discussed here include diet, exercise, fitness, food and recipes, creating healthy habits, women’s health, weight loss, and the list could go on.  Figure Friendly Club is written and edited by Ashley Wagner. If you have any suggestions, comments, tips, or motivational weight-loss stories, you can send an email to ashley@figurefriendlyclub.com

– About Ashley Wagner–

I thought I’d write a little bit about myself, and why I started Figure Friendly Club.  First, about me.  I was born and raised in the north suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. I met my husband while in high school, and several years later we got married and moved off to Iowa so that we could both attend Iowa Sate University. I majored in Elementary Education, and graduated in December, 2006.Right now, I’m in an “in-between” stage of my life.

I have a passion for a lot of things in life, but one of them is living a healthy life style. When I’m passionate about something, I spend as much time as possible learning about it, reading about it, and studying it.  I became passionate for a healthy life style, because it was something that I was lacking in my life.

In the Winter of 2005, I realized that my unhealthy habits were making me miserable.  I decided that I needed a change, and it was going to take more than snapping my fingers to get the change.  At the time, I was weighing in at my highest weight ever, I was depressed, and knew something needed to change.  For a couple of months, I mentally prepared myself for the challenge.

My journey of turning my unhealthy habits into healthy ones, losing weight, dieting and exercise began in February of 2006.  I had read and soaked in as much information as possible. Armed with my healthy dieting plan and with a gym across the street from my apartment, I had no excuse to fail.  Through diet, exercise, and a general change in how I was living my life, I was successfully able to drop weight, and met my goal by September of 2006. Since then I have successfully maintained my weight.

I’ve learned so much throughout my journey, from new ways to exercise, to healthy recipes. Most importantly, I’ve learned to change my lifestyle. Through the Figure Friendly Club, I am hoping to share what I’ve learned, but more importantly, learn from people like you. I’d love to form a community where everybody can share their own thoughts, experiences, and struggles so that we can all learn from each other.

For me, and I’m sure many others, keeping the weight off will always be a constant struggle. When you know better, you do better, and I firmly believe that. I now know how to live a better lifestyle, and through the Figure Friendly Club, I’m hoping to share that knowledge with others so that we can all do better.