I used to be fat. I didn't really know that I was fat, but that didn't change the fact that I was. Not only was I fat, but I was unhealthy, and showing a bad example for my kids, and that is even worse. Ok, starting at the beginning of this story.
I was never one of those stick-like girls, but I wasn't really big either. I was somewhere in the middle. However, when I was younger, pre-teen age or so, I had some really strange ideas about my body. I remember not even wanting to wear shorts. Everyone used to bug me about it in a good natured way, but I stuck to my guns and wore pants in 30 degree heat. Somewhere along the way, the body issues went in the complete opposite direction and I was wearing all sorts of wild things that I wouldn't be caught dead in today. Call it teenage rebellion, because it probably was. Somewhere down the road into highschool, I started losing weight. Quite a bit of weight, and friends started to get a bit concerned. I didn't realize it at the time, but I think the things that I was going through emotionally had a big impact. That and I was really busy and didn't eat enough. In grade 12, I think I lived off the school's breakfast burritos and slurpees from 7-11. Somehow that led to me being the thinnest I have ever been, and I don't even know that I noticed. My eating and sleep habits also led to me not being very healthy mentally, though I didn't know it at the time.
Then came marriage, and baby number one. I was so in love with my son and concerned about his well-being that I sort of forgot about myself. I also had somewhat of an identity crisis as I struggled to be this young mom, the first of my friends to have a baby. I didn't know who I was for a while. I didn't know what to wear, what to say, how to explain a life of diapers and motherhood, and I didn't know how to relate. Post-partum depression and too many huge life changes at once came next, and with them came what were probably my worst eating habits yet. My husband and I decided to live like a bunch of college kids and eat all the foods we missed out on in childhood. I'm talking corndogs, Lucky Charms, and those gigantic chocolate muffins from Costco. We lived off that stuff. I'm serious. I remember watching Gilmore Girls and rationalizing my eating habits along with the Lorelais. It was kind of funny to me. Healthy people were weird, and missing out and I was so happy not to be one of them. Power to the candy! Obviously, this wasn't exactly helpful to my weight. To top it all off, I got pregnant again with my daughter fairly quickly after having my son. Just as I had started to make the effort to at least go for a walk every now and then, bam! Pregnancy and laziness struck again! By the time Lu was born, I was a whale. No, I am not being overly hard on myself. It was bad. The worst part was that I didn't even see it.
Somehow, I managed to tell myself that this was ok, and made every excuse in the book. I could see my face had gotten a little rounder, and my belly was sticking out a tad more than usual, but it was alright. I had time. I had my babies to focus on. My husband loved me the way I was. I'm just naturally a bigger person. Blah, blah, blah. One day, I went shopping with a friend and saw myself for the first time in a full-length mirror (mine had been broken in one of our many moves and just hadn't been replaced). What a wake up call that was. I barely recognized myself. For months afterwards, I was so upset. I had all this ridiculous anger about metabolisms and all my skinny friends who spent their days eating icecream and candy, and are still only 75 pounds. I spent copious amounts of time googling quick fixes and imagining myself falling ill with some grave sickness and dropping 20 pounds just like that. Surprise! It didn't happen. To top it off, I was hit with more post-partum depression and was all around miserable. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't just my weight making me miserable. I'm not as shallow as all this sounds! My eating habits and all of the sitting around were contributing to my depression. Then one day, I saw this quote, which is probably going to sound cheesy but it helped to wake me up. It was something along the lines of "happiness is a decision". Something just clicked. I realized that I could wallow and I could pat myself on the back, feed myself another excuse and another chocolate bar, or I could get a grip and do something about my misery.
So get a grip I did. I radically changed my eating habits, and the eating habits of my family. I had never let my kids eat the kinds of things I was eating, but now I was especially determined that they would have only the best. I kicked my extreme carb addiction, which was very difficult for me because carbs are always the quickest and tastiest things to grab. I replaced my unhealthy sweets with healthy ones. I started to eat things like quinoa, plain yogurt, and - get ready for a shocker here, folks - vegetables! I started to work out. Alot. Slowly but surely, I saw the pounds start to leave me. I know they say you shouldn't obsess over the scale, but for me it was my competition. Every day, I would check and see if the numbers went down. If they didn't, I would kick my own butt even harder the next day. If they did, it would only egg me on. From the time after my daughter was born until now, I have lost 50ish pounds. Hurray!
Now hold up, because this isn't just a post to talk about how wonderful and sexy I am. This is a post to put it out there that I am struggling again. After I lost the weight, I had everyone telling me how great I looked, how skinny I was, how I inspired them, and on and on and on. So what did I do? I decided I looked so damn fantastic that I could slack off again. My motivation was gone. I felt like saying, "Hey world, I've arrived on the Island of the Fit and Skinny!". Only you know what? I haven't. Eventually, my lazy ways crept back, my diet was letting a few too many things slip by, and my moods have been starting to swing again. My all-or-nothing personality has chosen to do nothing, and that is just not ok.
I have such a long ways to go. I am not just talking about the last 15 or 20 pounds I'm wanting to lose. I'm talking about continuing to keep up my lifestyle change. I'm happier when I'm healthier, and it's as simple as that. I can't give up now. I just can't. I can't go back to how it was. So I'm putting it out there that I'm going to pick myself up and keep going. I am doing a 30 Day Challenge and I am going to try my very hardest to stick to it! I know now that even if I don't see a change right away, there is nothing more rewarding then working for what I want. I mean that for any aspect of my life. So you know what? It's great that there are tiny people out there who can do nothing and still look and feel like runaway models in Tahiti. Good for them! But I am one of the lucky ones who have to work for it. It's frustrating, and I could sit around and get all in a huff. Or I could just accept that that is how things are and change what I have the power to change. I'm all-around better for it.
The current plan?
- Start with continuing my 30 Day Challenge. No skipping, excuses, or laziness. It's just 30 Days.
- Clean up my eating. Why exercise if you are going to cancel it out by eating like crap.
- No more obsessing about how I look in comparison to other people. Let sticks be sticks, and people who want to be chubby be chubby. How much other people weigh shouldn't have any effect on how much I weigh. Only I have to bear the consequences if I make excuses. I'm doing this for me.
- No more pretending that things are fine the way they are. Have I been feeling down, had no energy, or been irritable? Heck yes, I have. Do I look like a brown version of Zooey Deschanel? I most definitely do not. I'm not done yet.
- No more upsetting myself about all the time I've wasted. What's done is done. All I can do is start over.
- If I still don't see the results I want after the thirty days, kick it up another notch. Being a slacker isn't going to help anything.
- Even if I will never fully rid my body of chubbery, it is still worth it. Health is worth it. The feeling I get after a workout is worth it. The example I set for my kids is worth it.
One of my biggest annoyances in life is people who don't take control of their problems, and just do something, anything, about them. I'll be damned if I become my own worst enemy. So for now, I'll still be crying along with Betty Draper in Mad Men when she says things like, "I lost a half a pound and I feel like I should pat myself on the back, because it was really hard." I feel ya, Betty, I feel ya. Anyways, just in case this post wasn't already enough of a snooze, I'll be sure to update you on this after 30 Days! I'm holding myself to it.
