I don’t know about you but some time ago I finally decided to stop calling God a liar.
What????? YES. I did call him a liar, but not in the way you may think.
Since I was a preteen, I didn’t like my body and I didn’t like my face. All I saw was imperfections everywhere! I compared myself to other girls around me who seemed to be growing into their “young lady” bodies much faster than me!
I finally got more comfortable with my body at about my second year of college. Yet, still compared myself to other women at times.
After becoming a first time mom with a post baby and post c-section body, my insecurities started coming back. I had gained about 35 pounds and I didn’t like looking at my naked self in the mirror…no way!
Eventually I lost the weight, perhaps because I was in my 20’s at the time, and you know how they say the younger you are, the higher your metabolism. Perhaps that was why?
I remember walking a lot though with my newborn and his “jogging” stroller. I didn’t jog much (I probably jogged maybe twice the whole time), but I did take 20-30 minute walks.
After my second born son, I gained even more weight, however this time I got more active with my exercising to lose most of it. I was proud of myself!
Then I had my daughter at the age of 42 and oh my goodness, by the time it was time to give birth to her, I was almost 200 pounds! After giving birth I was at 178 pounds. My pre-baby weight was 142 pounds so you can imagine my challenge ahead.
I decided to give myself some grace after I gave birth. What that meant was to give myself the first year of my daughter’s life to just focus on caring for her and not to obsess over my overweight body. I breastfed and went on walks with her some days of the week but I didn’t exactly have a weight loss routine.
I read tons of articles about being proud of our post baby body and to tell you the truth, these were super encouraging, so they kept me going.
I did slowly lose 10 of those pounds in that year so that was pretty good, but I still had a journey ahead.
Finally it was time to take intentional action. I asked my husband to join me on this decision because I knew I needed a partner to help keep me going and accountable.
I decided to count calories to make sure I ate better. I used a free app on my phone and then decided to do “brisk” walking in my neighborhood with my daughter for about 30 minutes a day. Some days I got on my elliptical machine to get more intense cardio. My husband counted calories with me and he also did some weight lifting in the week.
I’ll be honest, the first month was so hard! I almost always felt a little hungry-enough to be annoying but not in any way detrimental. I realized that my stomach was simply trying to get used to my new smaller portions.
What kept me from not giving up was the simple and eye opening fact that my BMI (Body Mass Index) was very high and I was just 1 point shy of being “pre-diabetic”. This was scary, especially since diabetes runs in my family.
It’s amazing how the mind works. When we realize how important something is to us, it really can be so motivating-even when we sacrifice.
It took that first month and a half to finally start seeing the weight start coming down. Once my body had that kickstart it needed, then I started losing about 2 pounds a week! I ended up losing 16 pounds in those 3 months. WOW! I haven’t felt that proud of myself in a long time. By the way, my husband lost 20 pounds-woo hoo! He was happy he joined me .
So is my weight loss journey over? NO! It’s only begun!
I’ll admit after losing the 16 pounds I was content, so I stopped trying and I’ve seen my weight fluctuate gaining about 3 pounds on and 3 pounds off.
So what’s next? I made a new goal to lose 5 pounds over the next month so that I will fit much better into my work clothes when I start teaching again in late August.
After that? I’ll lose 5 more pounds by the end of the Fall season to be back at my official pre-pregnancy weight!
Is this possible? ABSOLUTELY!
The Intentional Christian Woman 