Something I have struggled with nearly my entire life is my lack of self-confidence. My self-image. I have never been truly happy with myself, if you know what I mean. There has always been something, whether physical, intelligence-based, performance-based or what have you, that I have not been satisfied with.
While I do feel that everyone has room for improvement, I also know that there is a point that this dissatisfaction becomes unhealthy.
Many of my friends will tell you that I am talker. I am loud, I am opinionated, and I am not afraid to share it. But the reality is - I am not really that way. Oh, yes, I am that way with people that I KNOW. People that I am comfortable with. But people I have only just met or don't have a close acquaintance with? I am quiet and reserved. I probably come off as stuck-up or stand-offish. But the reality is - I am SHY. I am probably too concerned with other people's opinions and impressions of me, and it's something I struggle with daily.
Today I am starting a diet. Ever since Miss Sunshine's birth (well, really even before I got pregnant with her, but most especially since she's been born) I have struggled mightily with my weight. I currently weigh the most I have ever weighed in my life, with the exception of when I was heavily pregnant with Miss Sunshine. Yes, I even weigh more than (or equal to) what I weighed when I was my most pregnant with Monster Boy. There, I have admitted it. It makes me unhappy. Which makes me depressed, which makes me eat. It's a vicious cycle. I am an emotional eater - I always have been. So when I get upset about something, I eat. Which, you know, causes you to gain weight. It's a circle I have been stuck in for a while now. It certainly does not help matters that those little happy pills that I took for a while after Miss Sunshine was born also cause weight gain. Add those two things together and you get where I am now.
I am not obese. I am medically overweight, but not obese. If I lose 30-35 pounds, I will be dead center in the healthy weight range for my height. I'm shooting for 40 pounds of weight loss - not because I have an overwhelming desire to be skinny (because, let me face reality for a minute here - even if I do lose 40 lbs, I will never be skinny. I am just not built that way. Ah, the joys of having "child-bearing" hips....) but because I want to be HEALTHY. I want to feel GOOD about myself when I look in the mirror. I want to think to myself "Man, I look good for having two kids." Not be using "Well, I have two kids" as an excuse for the way that I look.
I have been researching my options - looking at the best ways to lose weight. Do I want fast results? Of course! Who doesn't? But I want results that are going to LAST as well. So I made the decision that I am not going to use a fad diet. I'm not going to go for those fast results. If the results come fast, well, then great. But that isn't my goal. I am going to reduce my portion size. I think this is a huge part of my issue. Along with that, I'm going to count my calories (at least in the beginning, until I get used to eating appropriate foods) and watch my fat intake. I'm going to exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, five days a week. And most of all, I'm going to have faith in myself that I can make this work.
This is about making a lifestyle change. Today is the first day of my "new" life. Life as a healthy person. Because I know one thing for certain - as much as Daddy Mac and I would both love to have another child - I'm not doing it until I reach my goal weight. I have, with both pregnancies, been lucky enough to lose most of, if not all, of my "baby weight" within 6 weeks of delivery. I've just developed a bad habit of putting it all back on about 6 months later. So, if I can get myself into a healthy lifestyle, at a healthy weight, and THEN get pregnant and have a baby, I have faith that not only will I have a healthy pregnancy (which would be a first for me, by the way) but that I will be able to maintain my healthy lifestyle AFTER my baby is born. So that I can be the best parent possible for ALL of my children.
And if we don't have that third child? Well, isn't it even better for the children I DO have to have a healthy, happy mother? A good example for how to eat healthy and live healthy?
So you, my friends, get to go on this journey with me. I'm not going to be recording every little thing that I eat here, or anything like that. In fact, I'm not even going to tell you my starting weight. I am, however, going to do a weekly check-in, as a way to keep MYSELF accountable for where I am at on my journey. Put it out there for all of you in cyber-space to see, so that I can't avoid it, I can't hide it, I can't run away from it. Starting today.
Today, I have 40 pounds to go.
This little ticker will take up residence on my sidebar for daily tracking (and a way to make myself enter my weight daily). Weekly, I will make a post solely with my weight left to lose as the title, and a blog posting about how I am feeling about my progress, along with a copy of said ticker, again.
No comments:
Post a Comment