So my friend Jara started a challenge. A 31 day challenge to be exact. Starting this Friday it will be exactly 31 days till summer. In those 31 days she is challenging us to do 31 different things to help prep our bodies (and our minds) for the summer season. As most people I love the summer and the sun. I do not love wearing a swimsuit or how I feel about myself in said swimsuit. I'll be totally honest I haven't even owned one since my Freshmen year of college and I had to have that for the summer camp that I worked at.
I've committed to Jara's challenge and so I'm sharing it with whoever may read this what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, and what I'm learning. Before I get into that though I thought I would tell you all a little bit about my weight journey.
I was always fairly thin and tall growing up as a kid. Probably something to do with my poor eating habits and the fact that I was fairly active and did various activities that kept me busy though not necessarily considered athletic.
In college not so much with the physical activity except what was required from my required PE classes. I did what I had to do but I was just too busy to do more than that. I worked, took full loads of classes, and even had some responsibilities around campus that kept me busy. I ate ok and I gained some weight but I wasn't upset about it.
After graduating and getting married I realized that I ate terribly. My work schedule was insane and I soon fell into a pattern where I ate lots of junk. Lots of the food at that time in my house would have been freezer foods and lots of prepackaged type pantry meals that you just dump together into a pan. Not good I know. I gained weight but with working all the time I didn't think about it and seemed to stay at a consistent weight. Again not upset by this but didn't feel great about myself.
After a few years I got pregnant with my first kid. Pregnancy is bliss for some people but it was not for me. I was sick the whole time. Unable to eat anything except potatoes and steak. I actually lost weight being pregnant and after I had my son I was 5 lbs less than what I weighed before. The funny thing was though that while I breast feed my son I actually began to put on the weight. I was actually around 220lbs for awhile. I felt fat and I hated it.
I decided to do Weight Watchers and take a look at my eating as a whole. Eating processed junk was doing nothing for myself or my kid that I was nursing. I didn't go to meetings but did get my husband to do it with me. I lost almost 30lbs and was doing great. Staying at home allowed me to cook real meals with veggies and lean meats and it was great!
After a year I was pregnant again. I didn't work out at all before the pregnancy and even though I was at a better weight I still hadn't really accepted that you have to work out and eat right for things to work. After having my daughter and going through the same weight problems as before I decided I was going to finally get a hold on this.
This year I decided that it was time to stop feeling icky about myself and to pay some respect to my body for all it's hard work and providing me with 2 beautiful kids. I decided I was going to eat right and workout. I started my journey just 17 weeks ago and was at 201 lbs. I was so serious about changing the way that I feel that I actually started a process of first getting rid of the clothes that made me feel fat or didn't look good on me. During that process of going through my clothes I started doing a Jillian Michaels workout DVD and found myself hooked to how I felt working out.
I debated about joining a gym but with the cost of the gym and having to deal with childcare we would up buying an elliptical instead. I committed to working out 30 mins a day on it for 5 days a week. I've stuck to that minus 2 weeks where I was sick and had a pulled muscle. I'm now down to 182.5 and have been there for 3 weeks. I'm ready to pull my hair out and even though I've gone down several inches and several sizes I'm still not where I want to be.
I'm still doing the elliptical but I'm mixing up the training modes and shooting for 40 mins a day. I've also just recently (as in yesterday) added a 3 mile walk mode for the evenings. I know that in order for me to get to my goal weight that I need to change things up and this is where the challenge comes in for me. I'm ready to do something different and get this weight loss moving again.
My goal is to reach 150 which is in the healthy range the FDA says I should be in. I'm going to continue to work hard and do this the right way. I respect my body for what it can do and accept that I'll never have wash board abs. I don't plan on devoting hours of my day to ab exercises and realize that my genetics will affect the over all shape of my body. My mom, grandma, great grandma, all have little poochy bellies. I will too. That's just the way that it is. I'm ok with that. I just want to know that I'm doing what I can to maintain a healthy life and be a good example to my kids on how you should eat and take care of your body.
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