Kicking My Own Booty - Day ?????

I remember when I first got pregnant, there was an innate part of me that was hoping I would be the woman whose weight dropped off effortlessly post-baby. After all, I had genetics in my favor - if you've seen my mom you know what I mean :).

It turns out, that wasn't so much the case. BUT here I am, 9 months later and I can say that I have officially lost my baby weight....even a couple pounds more than. Granted, I have a little extra baggage in certain areas than I had pre-baby, but the pounds don't lie, right?

It seems equitable to me: 9 months to gain the weight, 9 months to lose it.

It seemed as though the proper reward for losing the baby weight was a semi-makeover, so today I dyed my hair brunette, which is something I have been wanting to try for awhile. And what can I say - I really love it!

(Un-styled, but you get the idea)

And finally, a few gratitude shout-outs:

Devin - for giving me insight into the uncharted territory of healthful living and eating

Matt - for saying I was beautiful even when I felt far from it

Finn - for being worth every pound

Kiki - my biggest cheerleader and empathizer

My scale - for finally being on my side

And to all those who love me large and love me not so large...............

a genuine thank you.

Kicking My Own Booty - Day Twenty-Three

I wrote this last Wednesday and had yet to post it:

Day Seventeen

This has not been the easiest week.

This past weekend Matt and I faced true temptation to stray far off of our diet plan. Taco John's was calling our names - simultaneously, if you can believe that - and we yearned to respond!

But we withheld. There have been other temptations; namely, for me, the candy aisles at Walmart/Target where I am so in the habit of "treating" myself.

On top of the increased pull of temptation, we have all been nursing colds this week. Perhaps that is why our defenses are down; we feel sick and thereby sorry for ourselves and in the past would have treated ourselves accordingly. I don't think I ever realized before just how often I ate to meet an emotional need: if I was down or crabby or feeling sorry for myself, I would turn to food to help me turn it around. What a shame that I missed all of those opportunities to bring those needs to God.

Anyway, being sick at night in our household looks something like this: Matt snores more and keeps me awake. I cough like a maniac and wake him up. Finn periodically wakes up as though he is missing the party. Needless to say, I have been lacking in sleep this past week. On top of that, I have been trying to squeeze in more hours at home for work as they need my help during a transition period.  On top of THAT, I have been making myself work out 2x/day - something cardio and Pilates.

So what I have had is this: More work + less sleep + annoying cough x self-imposed pressure to work out - comfort food = help!

Phew, okay, I feel as though this entry is so negative. Time for some positive news!!!

I tried on all of my old jeans today and they ALL fit! Granted, they still don't fit the way they used to, but I am getting there. And this is a huge milestone for someone who just a couple of months ago couldn't pull them up over her hips. Ug, that is embarrassing to admit. But there it is.

I share the good so it is only fair to share the bad as well!

Plus it is just 1 and a half more weeks until I get to go shopping! All those extra hours of work (and extra money) will come in mighty handy then :).
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Day Twenty-Three

Here I am, nearly a week later, and I can't say that I have fared much better this week than last. Granted, it has been a crazy - in every sense of the word - week. My dad passed away on Thursday, siblings came into town Friday, viewing on Friday, more siblings on Saturday, interment and memorial on Saturday, family time, family time, family time. I feel as though I have barely been home. I feel as though Finn's schedule is all out of whack. I feel emotionally drained. I feel exhausted.

And after the good news last week of being able to fit into my old pants, this week I am a little disappointed in myself.

Let's just say that where there is a funeral, there is food. For several days, I fought the urges and stayed pretty close to the diet laid out for us. But by Sunday I started to break. I had already made so many compromises with my diet, trying to stay as on track as possible with the meals that were being provided. But I slowly found that being firm with myself just was not working anymore. The importance of the diet lessened in the midst of everything else.

Yesterday I flat out rebelled and ate a piece of my mom's beloved BTS cake (as a chaser for lunch, no less).

One slice of BTS cake does not bring emotional healing. Trust me, I know.

While I have since gotten back up on the perennial horse..........I still am facing some disappointment with myself that I didn't make it the 4-6 weeks on the diet like I wanted to without cheating.

As much as I want to dust myself off and give myself grace, I am finding it hard to muster up the energy to do so.

So today I just do what I can do: I pick back up my diet. I rest when I can. And I pore into God's Word, because only there can I find the cure for my exhaustion that I am so desperate to grasp.

Kicking My Own Booty - Day Seven

The first week is officially complete! Matt and I have both been healthy eaters for 7 whole days! And I have to say, it is a huge part of our success to have each other as support.

(taken while we were engaged - this is the weight range we are shooting for!)

The good news is that I weighed myself yesterday and I have already lost a few pounds.

The better news is that I feel different - better about myself.

The bad news is that I really miss my sweets. I think that has been the most difficult part of this for me. As a reward last night, we treated ourselves to Cherry Berry. However, instead of my past concoctions which consisted of filling the carton to the brim and topping it with candy, I used more reserve in the amount and topped it off with all fruit.

And it was still delicious! Maybe slightly less so.....but delicious none the less. Let's just say I was very thankful for Cherry Berry last night!

I also set the goal for us that once we have a whole month of eating healthy under our belts, we can go shopping for some new clothes (although Matt said that he would rather put that money toward a new guitar...............ug, men :)

3 more weeks until I get a fancy new outfit to go with the fancy new way I feel about myself!

Kicking My Own Booty - Day One

I was watching an episode of Gilmore Girls awhile back, and it struck me as strangely familiar. In it, Lorelai is having a conversation with Luke, who is instructing her why eating healthy is important. The conversation went like this (I tried to find the clip on YouTube, to no avail):

Luke: How's the cold coming?
Lorelai: It's fine.
Luke: Any better?
Lorelai: It's fine.
Luke: Because it's the third day in a row you've ordered soup for breakfast.
Lorelai: Oh! Thanks for the tally.
Luke: You know what helps get rid of a cold?
Lorelai: Endless vague questioning first thing in the morning?
Luke: A healthy immune system.
Lorelai: My second guess!
Luke: You know how you get a healthy immune system?
Lorelai: Remember when you hated me? That was fun, wasn't it?
Luke: Is it eating nothing but crap all day and blowing out your braincells with coffee?
Rory: No.
Luke: That's right. No.
Lorelai: Why are you helping him?
Rory: No seemed like the right answer.
Luke: If you eat a vegetable now and then, maybe some high fiber cereal in the morning...
Lorelai: Luke, my soup is getting cold.
Luke: At least eat the carrots in the soup this time, not just the noodles?
Lorelai: I promise. (to Rory) Here, eat my carrots.

I was pretty sure as I watching it that I have had a similar conversation on many occasions, which each went in one ear and (you know the drill) out. the. other.

Today is the big day that I began my quest to eat healthier. My friend, Devin, was kind enough to put together some instructions on how to begin this battle of the bulge. The groceries have been bought, the junk has been purged, and my husband is on board with me as a partner in tackling weight loss.

(One final supper of indulgent goodness last night)

And I have to say, for a first day it was not so bad! I went to the zoo with my best friend, Chanelle, and her 3 kids; I remembered my little snacks; I've been drinking my water; I went on a walk with Finn this afternoon. I am feeling perty good! Tonight for dinner, my uber talented husband put together an absolutely delicious meal of salmon, rice and broccoli. Yes, I, who as a 23 year old had to ask my friends  how to eat broccoli, ate broccoli for dinner. I wish I would have taken a picture of that meal as well, but it smelled too amazing to waste time snapping a photo.

This is progress!

Who knows - if I keep it up, I may end up being in better shape by my 30th birthday in January than I was for my 18th birthday. Take that world!

And then, to celebrate, you can buy me a gigantic, fudge-filled ice cream cake! :)

Pregnancy Weight Loss, Schmegnancy Schmeight Schmoss

This isn't really easy for me to write about. However, my purpose with having a blog was to sort out the spasms of my mind and so I suppose that writing it all down is worthy of a shot.

Having a baby changed my body, and not in a good way! Before I go any further, I must stress that everything was absolutely worth it and I wouldn't change a thing!!! Finn is my answered prayer.

Onward.

For the first few months of my pregnancy, I remember thinking that I could really get used to being pregnant! I had dealt with some nausea but not much and I was having fun working on building my belly and experimenting with maternity fashion. Somewhere around the beginning of my third trimester, that all changed.

It started small.....and at the risk of sounding shallow, I started to realize that it had been awhile since someone had told me that I looked pretty or that I was such a cute pregnant lady. This didn't seem like such a big deal to me at the time and I would most often shrug off those feelings. After all, I didn't feel so different when I looked in the mirror.

But then I would see pictures of myself and would be in shock of how large I looked in the photo. People would comment to me on how I looked so much further along than I really was. People told me that I looked miserable and swollen. I didn't feel any of those things. And then someone just flat out said that I looked fat.

So I cried.

But because I had a valiant young man by my side still telling me that I was beautiful to him, I got over that too.

(Pictures of me at 8 months that I swore no one would ever see. This is what I call "making peace"!

Looking back, I suppose that there was a big part of me that hoped/believed that the moment I walked out of the hospital after giving birth, I would be considerably slimmer. Even possibly thin again.

As it turned out.................not so much.

Now, I have lost weight over the last six and a half months since Finn was born, just not as quickly or drastically as I had hoped. The hard-to-swallow fact is that I still have a good 10 pounds to go - at least. And these aren't just any 10 pounds. These are stubborn little suckers.

To shift gears just a tad, I am slowly beginning to realize that if I want to be pleased with the way I look, the time has come to eat like a grown-up.

Most people who know me, even on a surface-level, know that I do not have the best eating habits. Through the last 10 years of my adult life, my diet has consisted heavily of Totino's frozen pizza, pizza rolls, bagels with peanut butter, something sweet after every meal, and lots of Diet Coke. Zero water. Zero vegetables. Almost zero fruit (unless it was strawberries with sugar on top). This did change substantially when I got pregnant but I do not believe that the change was dramatic enough.

Writing all of this down and the utter truth of it feels a little laughable. But I also just feel ashamed.

For a lot of the last few years I have blamed my poor eating habits on my mom. After all, she was the one who let me eat french fries with a chocolate malt chaser for many meals.

I also claimed that I just didn't know how to eat healthier. I didn't know how to prepare well-rounded meals or what had the nutrients I needed or what to buy.

But I am realizing that these have been crutches for me to lean upon and I have grown tired of excuses.

Sound the alarm! Break out the marching band! Anyone have any balloons??!

Gretchen is changing the way she eats. For good.

The other day at Target, I bought peas and green beans. This was truly a momentous occasion. Now I just have to eat them :).

In all seriousness, I am changing the way I eat for many reasons. To be healthy. To not be unhealthy. To get my body better prepared for another pregnancy. And yes, to lose weight.

I am also coming to finally admit that being healthy and taking care of our bodies is important to God. Over the years, this has been a Biblical principle that I have glossed over carelessly and chose to not apply to my life.
"Learn to appreciate and give dignity to your body, not abusing it, as is so common among those who know nothing of God" (1 Thessalonians 4:4 MSG)

And I admit that I am still learning - there is still a whole uncharted (by me) world out there of eating healthy. If anyone has any tips or tricks, I welcome them!

And please - be gentle with the pregnant women you know. Tell them they look beautiful and by all means, never ever ever in a gazillion years ever tell them that they look fat. They have enough going on without dealing with others' insensitivity. This is spoken from one who knows :).