Monday, August 31, 2009

weighty matters

See this girl? The was pre-Jude Jen...taken about five months before I found out I was pregnant with Jude. True - her life was much less full without a sweet Judeabug, but she could run for ten miles and could actually get the jeans in her closet to zip.



Would you like to see a picture of what I look like now? Oh wait - that's right - there ARE no pictures. Why, you ask? Because I very conveniently dodge, duck, dive, and all but pull a hamstring in my avid attempts to NOT have documentation of what I look like at the moment.
Bleck. That's how I feel when I look in the mirror right now. Bleck.


I know. I should think, "Oh, what a lovely daughter of God you are. Oh, how blessed you are to have a body that is capable of nurturing and birthing a child. Oh, how perfectly made your body was for your husband."


Bleck. Bleck. BLECK.


I'm about thirty pounds heavier than I was before I got pregnant, and it's irking at me. I discovered early on that to lose weight meant also losing my milk supply, so it's just something I've tried to move past until I finished breastfeeding. Well, I'm finished. And so are these thirty pounds. I'm tired of not fitting into my clothes, and I'm tired of complaining about feeling fat and not doing a dang thing about it.


I fully expect this to be a much slower journey than I'd like because my life right now just doesn't permit the hours it takes to work out, shower, and plan healthy meals...but I'm at least going to start. I'm going to get up and try to get in a run and/or walk three or four days a week, and spend time reading and praying the other three or four days. I'm going to start tracking the calories that I'm eating at sparkpeople.com, and I'm going to try and eat fill up on more fruits and vegetables. I'm also going to have smaller portions and will re-consider seconds.


So why am I posting this - a very personal struggle - on my public blog?


I need accountability. I'm a person who thrives on accountability. I'm very, very good at justifying my laziness if left to my own devices, but admitting here that I'm not happy with being overweight and that I'm perfectly capable of doing something about just makes me all the more committed.
I hate that I have an entire closet full of clothes that I love and am dying to wear. I hate that I have very few pictures of myself with my son and my sweet family. I hate that I'm embarrassed to not have lost this pregnancy weight. I hate that I've not made time to run, which is something that I love passionately and helps keep me sane.
So feel free to comment with any ideas for "staying on the bandwagon," so to speak. How do I balance being a Mom/being a wife/working/owning a business/being a minister's wife AND losing weight? How do I keep myself motivated?
And if you're a person with whom I regularly eat meals or see, feel free to give me the evil eye if I order some fatty pants meal. Feel free to ask me how the exercising is going. Feel free to bring on the weight loss advice, and feel especially free to notice when I lose even half a pound.
So here I go...on my way to figuring out how to be a Mom who is confident in herself (which I realize doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with weight loss), carves out time to take care of herself, and can rock a little black dress like nobody's business. :)

2 comments:

  1. You are so funny!! But having just popped out a kid myself, I totally feel your pain. =) So I'll just share one of my favorite tricks that seems to help me: I've been having our fruit/veggie course of the meal ready while I'm making the rest of the food. I always want to munch while I'm cooking, so this gives me something good to munch on. Plus, then I'm usually way full before the main meal even starts, thus I eat less. Fantastic! I hope we'll keep doing this as we have kids getting older, because it seems like kids are always begging for food while supper's being prepared.

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  2. Oh girl. I feel this post.

    Obviously I'm not stressing to the max about my weight now, being 14 weeks pregnant, but I definitely was in May and June. I was still 15-20 lbs. over my Weight Watchers goal weight and I was getting pressure from my WW boss to get back to goal STAT. The day she called to tell me that I needed to start losing 2 lbs./month was the day I found out I was pregnant...so she was the first person I told :-)

    Losing weight also equaled supply loss for me too, and since I refused to put my weight before Miles's health, AND since I knew we planned to have another baby soon, I didn't try very hard.

    But I'm happy to report that at 14 weeks in, I have yet to gain a pound. And my first appt. weight was almost exactly the same as my first appt. weight with my first pregnancy.

    You can do it, Jen! Make yourself a priority. I know that's ridiculously hard as an awesome mommy such as yourself, but doing it will help. My WW members don't lose weight by putting themselves at the bottom of their list. I'm not saying you get to be on top of the list (do we ever?), but make time for you :-)

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