A Journey to Health

I have been unhealthy for a good portion of my life.


Scratch that.


My mom was a health freak when I was little.  We had carrots and celery for snacks.  If we wanted something 'sweeter', we could add peanut butter and raisins to the mix.  She shopped at the whole foods store whenever we could afford it and made everything from scratch.

Me in my younger, healthier days.

Two things changed all that:  Mom went back to work and I started earning my own money.

Not only did Mom have less time to make dinners from scratch, she was too busy (along with Dad) making sure we had a roof over our head, little things like the fact that I now spent the majority of my money on junk food and candy either escaped her notice or she just hoped it was a phase - or she was just overly exhausted.
Also, I no longer enjoyed the amazing home-cooked meals I had been spoiled with in the past.  I still remember the first time I had store-bought tortillas and thought, "This tastes like plastic!"  Although, they did roll up better, so there was that. Not to say that we never had home-cooked meals, but they were few and far between.  Generally, it was chicken in a crock pot or something along those lines.  Still decent, just not what I had been used to up until then.  I'm not sure why it never occurred to my siblings and I that we could make a home cooked meal.  I guess we were just innately lazy that way.


Anyway, where was I?  Right.  Mom working, no super healthy meals like I was used to, disposable income for the first time and puberty in general.  Oh, I didn't mention that third one before?  Right.  I got kinda chunky around 5th grade.  I was about a year older than most other 5th graders.  I had no people my age in my general day-to-day viewing (middle school started with 6th grade) and I didn't realize (or had ignored those who told me) that it's completely normal to get a little chunky when you're just about to have a growth spurt.  I still remember very clearly being in the bathroom while two skinny/short girls discussed weight.  They were bemoaning the fact that they were almost 100 lbs!!  *gasp!*  And that they had to do something because they just couldn't live with themselves if they were that fat.  I knew full well that I weighed 114 and suddenly, I got very depressed.  If they thought 100 was fat, 114 must be morbidly obese!

4th Grade

This is the first time I remember feeling ashamed of my weight.  I'm not sure that I ever really noticed it before.  I may have, but not like this.  I went home and did what any girl my age would do in that situation:  I ate.  A lot.  Candy, chocolate, any junk food I could get my hands on or create.  Not to say I binged or ate it all at once.  However, over the next year or two, I was in a downward spiral.  I got depressed about how I looked and how much I weighed, so I ate because I eat when I'm depressed.  So, naturally, I gained weight.  I would get depressed about that and the whole cycle would start again.  By the time I was between 6th and 7th grade, I weighed 150 lbs.

I remember crying to my mom about it and her response was a very practical one:  try to stay that weight and you'll grow into it.  I'm glad to say, she was right.  I managed to stick to 150 and grew into it.  Only, I didn't see it that way.  I just saw that I was 150 and 150 was fat.  I look at pictures of me then and wonder what made me think I was so fat?!  I really wasn't.  I look good at 150.

Sophomore Year 2002 ~150 lbs

Anyway, I stuck to 150 through my sophomore year of high school, then stress, bad eating habits and sheer laziness rocketed me up to 174 by graduation.  I won't bore you with all the mundane details and weight milestones on my way up.  A picture is worth a thousand words, so have two:

High School Graduation  2004 (with my parents) ~175 lbs

College Graduation 2008 ~200 lbs

Suffice it to say, I gained weight so gradually, I didn't notice how MUCH weight I was putting on.  A pound or two here, a couple more there.  Before I knew it, I was pregnant with my second child and weighed 248 on the day I went into labor.  Some of you out there might be saying, "But wait!  You were 9 months pregnant.  That doesn't count!"  I say to you, I didn't gain all that much with my pregnancies.  That's the one good thing about being obese!  My official non-pregnancy high weight was 230.   

October 2010  ~230 lbs 
(with The Husband and The Boy) 

Nursing was a godsend for me.  By my 6-week postpartum appointment, I was down to 220.  I got lazy, though.  I figured I would just keep losing weight since I was breastfeeding so I went back to eating like crap and found a lot of excuses not to exercise (having two babies - one being a newborn - was excuse of choice).  I got a wake-up call in late November of last year when I bought a scale, stepped on it and was still 220!  I hadn't lost one pound since September.  Also, in the back of my mind, I kept hearing the nutritionist I had seen during both pregnancies warning me about my chances of contracting Type 2 diabetes since I have family history and had Gestational Diabetes with both my children.  If I didn't do something about my weight, I had a 50% chance of getting it in the next 5 years.

One night soon after realizing I really needed to do something about my health and weight, I was up in the wee hours of the morning, nursing The Girl and surfing the web to stay awake.  I was getting down about how I was a horrible example for my children.  How could I raise two healthy children if I couldn't be healthy myself?  In my web browsing, I came across mentions of a website by the name of MyFitnessPal.com and decided to check it out the next morning.  Somehow, I remembered to do that.  I created an account and started logging my food.  I hadn't made it half the day before I realized that something had to change IMMEDIATELY.  I couldn't believe I was putting all that in my body!  Seeing the numbers just made everything click in my head.  

April 2012 ~190 lbs

From that day on, I worked on portion sizes, fat intake and exercise.  I started small and cut back more when I felt ready.  In the past, I had tried to lose weight by either cutting something out of my diet completely or just exercising.  I'd never really tried tempering my diet and exercise.  The combination of smaller portion sizes, regular exercise and nursing worked wonders for me!  

By June, my weight plateaued.  Part of it was because I wasn't getting in exercise as much as before, but I also took that time to take a good look at my diet.  True, I was doing well with portion sizes, but this time I took a good, hard look at what I was eating.  I realized there were way too many carbs & sugars and not nearly enough fresh veggies and fruit.  About two weeks ago, I drastically cut bad carbs and refined sugars.  I refuse to cut anything out completely because that just makes me want it more!  If I tell myself that I can still have it, just few and far between, I'm fine and rarely crave it.  Go figure!  Since I made the cut, I have lost another 10 pounds and am only a little over 20 lbs from my goal weight of 150!  


Since I started my health lifestyle change in November, I have lost 47 pounds and went from a size 20 to a 14 (though I'm starting to fit into some 12s now)!  More than the weight, though, I feel better about myself.  I feel like I'm actually living life, not merely watching it pass by.  I have more confidence and am genuinely more happy.  Not just because I think I look prettier.  That helps, but it's more because I am so happy and proud that I kept at it.  I didn't give up a month into it.  I am actually taking care of myself.  I feel like I am finally a good example for my children and that, in truth, is the best reason of all. 

July 15, 2012 ~173 lbs

A Year in Review

I looked at the calendar this morning and the date seemed familiar.  It wasn't until I was in the shower that I realized why.  A year ago today, I became a stay at home mom.  My last day of work was July 7, 2011 and it's been quite a ride since!  In the last year, I've grown as a mom, a wife and my own person.


Staying home full-time forced me to take a long, hard look at myself and I wasn't impressed with what I saw.  I had an almost non-existent relationship with my son.  Being pregnant since he was 9 months old didn't help that.  He became a complete Daddy's boy and cried when I held him.  I was pretty much chopped liver as far as he was concerned.
During that time, I felt like a horrible wife.  I always seemed to be stressed and irritable.  We share one car between us and so, even though I only worked part-time, I drove hours a day after our son was born.  I would drive The Husband to work, drive home, get ready for work, drive The Boy to my in-laws or other babysitters (30 min away) and then drive to work (another 20 min).  After work, it was the same, just in reverse.  Did I mention I hate driving?  We wouldn't get home until 6:30 and both of us were too exhausted to make dinner.  Or clean.  Or do laundry.  All I wanted to do was eat something, put The Boy to bed, unwind for an hour or so and go to bed.  I worked all day on Saturday and we spent the day at The Husband's parents' house every Sunday, so it felt like we never saw each other.
I also didn't take care of myself as well as I should and I ate like crap.  Well, I'd eaten unhealthily most of my life, but it got really bad those last couple of years before I became a stay at home mom.  


In the last year, much of the above has changed for the better.  I'm not all there because life is a journey and these things take time (how many cliches can I use in one sentence?)  However, I feel that I've made a significant positive turn in my life as a whole.


I feel that I'm a much better parent to The Boy than I was when I was working.  I had been distant, stressed and preoccupied.  I feel a little guilty that The Girl has had the 'better' mom all along, but I've managed to mend my relationship with The Boy and he's much more open and loving toward me.  It gives me warm fuzzies just thinking about it. 


I also love the fact that I am here to see my children grow and learn new things.  It's an amazing experience and I am so thankful that I am able to witness and be so much apart of their lives.  There are always bad days, even weeks, where I wondered if I was crazy to leave my job and stay with my kids.  I'm not a 'kid person'...and sometimes they baffle me or get on my last nerve.  That's when I remind myself just how stressed I was when I was working - and that was only with one child!  


I feel that my relationship with The Husband has gotten stronger since I started staying home full-time.  I have time to do all the things that I couldn't before and we actually eat at a decent time now!  He helps around the house when it gets ahead of me (which is nearly always) and then we have time to actually spend time together.


More than my relationships with my children and my husband, staying home full-time has forced me to take a long, hard look at myself.  I didn't like what I saw.  I was unhealthy and had let it get out of control and it was affecting everything in my life.  I was lethargic and miserable.  It wasn't until November that I decided to do something about it.  I decided to take it a day at a time; exercise three times a week and work on eating smaller portion sizes.  I started the next day and haven't looked back.  I've been much more active and felt a hell of a lot more healthy, happy and proud of myself than I have in a very, very long time.   On a purely weight-type win, I just recently hit one of my major goals of passing the 'Obese' to merely 'overweight' (my BMI, that is) category.  More on that in another post, though. 


So, here is to another year of positive growth.  I'm looking forward to what it brings.