Week Four

Five weeks ago, I was sitting on my couch so unhappy with where I was physically.

I was always exhausted, took a nap each day, and still spent the majority of my day laying on my couch watching TV or scrolling through my news feed. I couldn’t manage without Starbucks and my eating habits were unpredictable. Some days I would eat half a pizza, a burger, and fries, and other days it was a struggle to make myself soup. Aside from that, I was discouraged with the numbers on the scale never moving.

Growing up, I’d always thought of myself as overweight. I remember one day asking my mom if she could buy me Slimfast. I was eight years old, and thankfully, she told me no. As upset as I was with her, I’m glad she said no. Instead, a few days later, she came home with a work out VHS  and told me that I could work out if I wanted to lose weight.

I remember being in my room, working out with the other people on the tape, scared that someone would walk in and make fun of me. Let me set the record straight now: I don’t believe that my parents were what attributed to me being “overweight” as a kid. Although we would eat Bill Millers from time to time, my parents cooked meals the majority of the week. Instead, I think the main contributing force was me starting school. As crazy as that sounds, I went from running around with my neighbors for hours upon hours to sitting in school, with a 30 minute recess break.

And then when we moved into the city, I still wasn’t getting the same amount of activity in, even though I would ride my bike and play games with the kids in my neighborhood.

Throughout the years, I’ve always felt bigger than I should be. But looking back now, I would love to have the body I did! Although there were girls a lot thinner than I was in high school, I didn’t let that manipulate me into unhealthy habits. We were simply built differently, and I believe that no matter how hard I could have tried, I could never have had their bodies.

I have always battled what society thought was healthy and what truly is healthy. And as I mentioned in a previous entry, when I moved out of my parents’ house, I really developed unhealthy habits. I would eat out all the time, sleep inconsistently, and rarely worked out. So, after this whole lifetime of battling my self-image, I finally decided to turn to a friend and ask for help.

So far, it’s been great. I’ve withstood a lot of temptation and have seen the numbers on the scale slowly drop (12 pounds as of this morning). It’s not always easy…it takes self-control to not order soda and fries, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out. What I’m learning through this process of getting to my optimal health is that diets never worked for me (or you either) because we view them wrong. We always go in with the mentality of “I don’t want to have (blank) disease,” or “I don’t want to be overweight.” Once we start eating healthy or working out, we start seeing progress and that fear of being overweight diminishes. We no longer feel like we need to go running because we’re starting to like the way we look. So instead, we go out with friends and eat too much.

The mentality we should have going in, however, is one of positivity. “I want to be at my healthy weight.” Or “I want to be able to hike up that mountain I never could.” Because when we focus on these goals, we won’t stop eating healthy or working out until they’re reached. And at that point, new goals can be set, and you’ll have already developed healthy habits you can continue to work on.

Another valuable thing I’m learning is something I’ve heard since I was little and Karen would force me to drink water everyday–Water is important! Not only does it flush out toxins, but your body craves it! I used to have the mentality that drinking water would cause me to bloat and gain weight. But what I’m seeing is that, the more water I drink, the faster my weight comes off.

It’s not until you take a step back and look at all of your choices in a day that you realize how many unhealthy choices you make. Today alone, had I not been on this plan, I would have made six unhealthy choices (breakfast tacos, soda, slurpee, fries, fried pickles, and sweet tea) all before 6:00 pm! And although it’s fine to have these things in moderation, on a typical day 5 weeks ago, I would have consumed all of this and thought I was doing fine. And then I would have done it again tomorrow.

As I continue on this journey of health, I’ll be posting about times I do great, and times I fail miserably. I invite you to follow along and learn from my journey, and if you want to begin your own, I encourage you to do so! If you want to reach out to my friend who has set me on this journey, visit her website here. If you want me to connect the two of you instead, I’ll be glad to. Both Lauren and her husband Ed are health coaches who can give you the support needed and talk to you about how they can help you get to where you want to be.

I’m not promising it will be easy, but it definitely will be worth it. All you have to do is decide that you’re ready to start. And really, that’s always the hardest part.