I decided that by the time I'm 35, I'm going to have the best body I've ever had. I'm going to do this by thinking and acting like my skinny friends. My daughter is out of shape and starting to get chubby. I was embarrassed about her lack of conditioning last night during her soccer game, next to her super athletically driven friend (who is the daughter of our friends - both of them skinny and in shape). My daughter is in the habit of snacking too often, and she craves treats and high-carb, starchy foods just like me. No one else is taking responsibility for changing this, and I can't count on my husband (who has plenty of his own food issues), so I have to be the responsible adult who brings about positive change in the family. Hubby is embarrassingly fat next to other people we know, too. I'm sure he feels the same way about me.
Anyway, I want to achieve my best body ever by the time I'm 35. That includes a fifth and final pregnancy, so it's really not too long a time frame. People who don't know me consistently guess my age between 5-8 years younger than I actually am, so when I'm 35 I'll still look like I'm in my late twenties, especially if I'm smoking hot.
I set my goal of my 35th birthday because I always impose these time limits on myself when I embark on a diet and exercise program, and it becomes too strict, too much pressure, resulting in my being unable to stick to it. Then I give up, again, beat myself up mentally, and gain back all the weight and then some with destructive overeating. I think 35 is a realistic goal. I'm 32 and a half right now, so that's two and a half years to really make positive, lasting changes. Even considering a fifth pregnancy and recovery time, I should be vastly different from the way I am now. I don't care if other people think I could or should reach my goals in less time than that; a long-term goal is the way I need to approach this. Clearly the opposite has not worked for me yet.
My husband is also not the spiritual leader (or the leader, period) of our family the way he should be. I must pray for him to be changed in this way, and I can no longer sit around waiting for him to step up; I have to take responsibility for my children's spiritual upbringing. Their behavior shows a lack of consistent, biblical discipline in the home, and I cannot abide that. I must turn myself into my most spiritually mature self yet, since I'm doing this largely without the support of my husband, and trying to undo years of tacky parenting on both our parts. I must rise above, go beyond where I've been before, leave my old ways behind. Patience, perseverance, consistency, and biblical backup to all my parenting approaches, day in and day out, will result in the type of behavior I want to see from my kids. That and lots of prayer!
Friday, April 27, 2012
From Now On...
...Friday is Personal Grooming Day! I feel so much better after my session this morning, I can't even describe it. I also am kind of incredulous that my son slept as long as he did, allowing me to get all this stuf done:
Feet exfoliated (with a cheese grater! Yes, my calluses are that thick), cuticles pushed back/trimmed, toenails filed, feet slathered in A&D ointment, and pedi-socks on.
Legs & underarms shaved
Face treated to a raspberry-mango mask
Showered, entire body moisturized, bangs blow-dried straight, gel in hair to tame the wildness
Tinted moisturizer & light makeup applied to face
Eyebrows freshly waxed & shaped
I am like a new woman! As the title indicates, I am making Friday mornings my new Personal Grooming Day/Time.
Feet exfoliated (with a cheese grater! Yes, my calluses are that thick), cuticles pushed back/trimmed, toenails filed, feet slathered in A&D ointment, and pedi-socks on.
Legs & underarms shaved
Face treated to a raspberry-mango mask
Showered, entire body moisturized, bangs blow-dried straight, gel in hair to tame the wildness
Tinted moisturizer & light makeup applied to face
Eyebrows freshly waxed & shaped
I am like a new woman! As the title indicates, I am making Friday mornings my new Personal Grooming Day/Time.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Weight, Food, and Me - Part III
I had a difficult pregnancy with our second child. He was a big baby (born at 9 lbs 15 oz), and the strain of carrying him made me unable to do a lot of physical activity. We didn't know it at the time, but our son had a neurological disorder & would have hosts of health problems. We had also just moved away from home for the first time - my husband graduated from medical school and was accepted to a family practice residency program about eight hours away from our home area in southeast South Dakota. So there I was, in a new town with no friends, a husband whose time was now consumed by residency demands, a precious little toddler girl, heavily pregnant with a baby I would soon find out had major health issues, and far away from any support or help from our parents. To top it off, my husband soon discovered that family medicine was not what he wanted to do with his medical education. He wanted to be a surgeon instead. That meant we would move again, for the second time in two years.
I don't remember actively trying to lose the weight after our second baby was born. He cried almost constantly and was seemingly unable to nurse. (We didn't know then, but he has an oral-motor weakness that prevented him from latching on. Later, as he became a toddler and did not start talking when he should have, we had him evaluated by a speech therapist and found out about the muscle deficiency.) DS #1 (Dear Son #1) has an extensive story all his own, which ties in with my weight experience because it affected my mental and emotional state so much, but to tell it all would take fifty more posts and is a little off the subject. Someday I might delve into it, but suffice it to say that much of the first year of his life is a blur in my memory, and I went into "survival mode." I was treated for postpartum depression and eventually got off those meds. We moved again, this time to Wichita, Kansas, where my husband began his 5-year residency in general surgery, and I continued trying my best to raise my preschool-age daughter without the support of parents or husband, all the while suffering the uncertainty of DS#1's health problems, and enduring his frequent doctor appointments and extensive tests.
I don't remember actively trying to lose the weight after our second baby was born. He cried almost constantly and was seemingly unable to nurse. (We didn't know then, but he has an oral-motor weakness that prevented him from latching on. Later, as he became a toddler and did not start talking when he should have, we had him evaluated by a speech therapist and found out about the muscle deficiency.) DS #1 (Dear Son #1) has an extensive story all his own, which ties in with my weight experience because it affected my mental and emotional state so much, but to tell it all would take fifty more posts and is a little off the subject. Someday I might delve into it, but suffice it to say that much of the first year of his life is a blur in my memory, and I went into "survival mode." I was treated for postpartum depression and eventually got off those meds. We moved again, this time to Wichita, Kansas, where my husband began his 5-year residency in general surgery, and I continued trying my best to raise my preschool-age daughter without the support of parents or husband, all the while suffering the uncertainty of DS#1's health problems, and enduring his frequent doctor appointments and extensive tests.
Weight, Food, and Me - Part II
I didn't worry too much about my weight when I got engaged to my now-husband. He loved me, found me attractive, and I wasn't really that fat. As in college, I could've stood to lose about 25 pounds, but I really wasn't obese, and I felt I still looked good, so I didn't bother. Plus we planned our wedding in about five months, following the tragic death of my fiance's dad, so weight loss was the last thing on my mind. I had enough emotional trauma going on. (At the time of our wedding, I probably weighed about 150 pounds, at 5'6". I still didn't own a scale or weigh myself regularly.)
Hubby and I were pseudo-concerned with our weight when we first got married. We would go through phases where we'd exercise together for hours, riding bikes around town, rollerblading, and jogging. But our eating habits were still terrible. We overindulged regularly, partly as a celebration of finally being independent married adults who could do whatever we wanted, and partly to assuage the grief we still felt over the loss of his dad (and residual grief from his brother's death two years prior to that). I just wanted him to be happy, and having fun was one of the ways we could do that. We either went out to dinner & a movie or rented movies and stayed in, ordering huge pizzas, buffalo wings and regular pop (and ate it all.) Still didn't own a scale. We both tried a crash diet once, but hubby actually passed out from too little nourishment - he's an all-or-nothing kind of guy, much like my own diet philosophy. He hit his head when he fell and was confused and disoriented for a brief time afterwards. He couldn't remember what day it was, and I was so scared. I fixed him a big plate of ham and eggs, and made him sit down till he felt better. That was the last time we crash-dieted.
I really started having to be aware of my weight when I became pregnant with our first child, a daughter. I remember the scale reading 158.5 at my first prenatal appointment with her. I gained about 40 pounds that pregnancy, topping out at 201 the day before I delivered. Afterwards I devoted myself to exercise - we had bought a treadmill - and managed to lose almost all the baby weight (I got down to 160) before getting pregnant with my second baby, our first son. The next couple of years, however, would put a bigger strain on us than I ever realized, and our weight/health concerns (once again) took a backseat to everything else. Not that they had been super-important before...
Hubby and I were pseudo-concerned with our weight when we first got married. We would go through phases where we'd exercise together for hours, riding bikes around town, rollerblading, and jogging. But our eating habits were still terrible. We overindulged regularly, partly as a celebration of finally being independent married adults who could do whatever we wanted, and partly to assuage the grief we still felt over the loss of his dad (and residual grief from his brother's death two years prior to that). I just wanted him to be happy, and having fun was one of the ways we could do that. We either went out to dinner & a movie or rented movies and stayed in, ordering huge pizzas, buffalo wings and regular pop (and ate it all.) Still didn't own a scale. We both tried a crash diet once, but hubby actually passed out from too little nourishment - he's an all-or-nothing kind of guy, much like my own diet philosophy. He hit his head when he fell and was confused and disoriented for a brief time afterwards. He couldn't remember what day it was, and I was so scared. I fixed him a big plate of ham and eggs, and made him sit down till he felt better. That was the last time we crash-dieted.
I really started having to be aware of my weight when I became pregnant with our first child, a daughter. I remember the scale reading 158.5 at my first prenatal appointment with her. I gained about 40 pounds that pregnancy, topping out at 201 the day before I delivered. Afterwards I devoted myself to exercise - we had bought a treadmill - and managed to lose almost all the baby weight (I got down to 160) before getting pregnant with my second baby, our first son. The next couple of years, however, would put a bigger strain on us than I ever realized, and our weight/health concerns (once again) took a backseat to everything else. Not that they had been super-important before...
Weight, Food, and Me, Part I
Here's the story about me, and food, and my weight. I grew up in a family who loved food. Every occasion, every get-together was celebrated with good food and lots of it. My dad raised beef cattle (still does), so we were a meat-and-potatoes farm family. Bread and butter were ubiquitous on our table. We had a big garden every summer, so it wasn't like vegetables were nonexistent. My grandma and mom canned green beans and wax beans till we were sick of looking at them. We also grew broccoli & cauliflower, onions, carrots, new potatoes, sweet corn, rhubarb, and sometimes pumpkins or squash. So it wasn't that our nutrition was horrible; it was probably the amounts of food we consumed (and how they were cooked) that eventually became a problem.
I was lucky enough to stay relatively thin throughout high school. My younger brother and sister both became chubby in childhood, but I somehow managed to avoid that. We all played some sports, so I don't really know what the difference was. By my junior year of high school, you could see that I was starting to accumulate some flabbiness in my stomach, upper arms, and thighs. I was still "skinny;" I was pretty enough, athletic enough to be a cheerleader, but you could tell I was lazy because I had no muscle tone. I remember looking at girls who were obsessed with their weight and thinking they were silly, or hearing about a girl in my school who had an eating disorder and wouldn't eat anything but salad. I felt pity for them, even a kind of horror. Who would want to live their life like that, I wondered? Why make yourself so miserable?
As I went through college, I became a yo-yo dieter. I wanted to be thin and look good, but I never wanted to put forth the effort of exercising and denying myself whatever I wanted to eat. I flattered myself that I looked good no matter what I weighed, when I was actually 20-30 pounds heavier than I should have been. I always compared myself to my peers. It was demoralizing to always be the slightly chubby girl in a world of skinny ones. I wanted to be like them, but not enough to make the necessary changes. Besides, I had a boyfriend who loved me and thought I was hot, so why bother? (He's my husband now, incidentally, and he still thinks I'm hot. I'm pretty lucky, because I weigh quite a bit more than I did in college, and he still finds me attractive. But I digress.)
Once in college I secretly joined Weight Watchers, but I was ashamed to have any of my friends find out, because everyone still told me how pretty I was and how I didn't need to lose weight. (I actually did need to lose about 25 pounds.) I went to a couple meetings, but was embarrassed to be there, so I quit going. Instead I did the normal carefree college thing, ordering pizza with my girlfriends whenever we wanted, dining on fatty fast food, "treating myself" on a regular basis. There was no concept of self-denial or moderation, except when I felt ultra-fat and decided to go on a crash diet to lose a few pounds.
During my sophomore year, I embarked on a real diet where I got up a half-hour early every morning to do Tae-Bo in my room, then switched to eating salads for dinner instead of cafeteria chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes with cheese sauce. After a month or so, I had lost a few pounds - I have no idea how many because I didn't own a scale (I wasn't smart enough to track my progress). In fact, I only noticed my weight loss because I tried on a cute burgundy suit that I had gotten too fat for (it had a tailored jacket and matching pencil skirt), and it fit again. I was elated. This diet thing had actually worked! But soon I gave up my healthy habits. Having achieved a little bit of weight loss, I felt free from the torture of dieting and exercise, free to go back to my old ways. It wasn't long before I put the weight back on.
I was lucky enough to stay relatively thin throughout high school. My younger brother and sister both became chubby in childhood, but I somehow managed to avoid that. We all played some sports, so I don't really know what the difference was. By my junior year of high school, you could see that I was starting to accumulate some flabbiness in my stomach, upper arms, and thighs. I was still "skinny;" I was pretty enough, athletic enough to be a cheerleader, but you could tell I was lazy because I had no muscle tone. I remember looking at girls who were obsessed with their weight and thinking they were silly, or hearing about a girl in my school who had an eating disorder and wouldn't eat anything but salad. I felt pity for them, even a kind of horror. Who would want to live their life like that, I wondered? Why make yourself so miserable?
As I went through college, I became a yo-yo dieter. I wanted to be thin and look good, but I never wanted to put forth the effort of exercising and denying myself whatever I wanted to eat. I flattered myself that I looked good no matter what I weighed, when I was actually 20-30 pounds heavier than I should have been. I always compared myself to my peers. It was demoralizing to always be the slightly chubby girl in a world of skinny ones. I wanted to be like them, but not enough to make the necessary changes. Besides, I had a boyfriend who loved me and thought I was hot, so why bother? (He's my husband now, incidentally, and he still thinks I'm hot. I'm pretty lucky, because I weigh quite a bit more than I did in college, and he still finds me attractive. But I digress.)
Once in college I secretly joined Weight Watchers, but I was ashamed to have any of my friends find out, because everyone still told me how pretty I was and how I didn't need to lose weight. (I actually did need to lose about 25 pounds.) I went to a couple meetings, but was embarrassed to be there, so I quit going. Instead I did the normal carefree college thing, ordering pizza with my girlfriends whenever we wanted, dining on fatty fast food, "treating myself" on a regular basis. There was no concept of self-denial or moderation, except when I felt ultra-fat and decided to go on a crash diet to lose a few pounds.
During my sophomore year, I embarked on a real diet where I got up a half-hour early every morning to do Tae-Bo in my room, then switched to eating salads for dinner instead of cafeteria chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes with cheese sauce. After a month or so, I had lost a few pounds - I have no idea how many because I didn't own a scale (I wasn't smart enough to track my progress). In fact, I only noticed my weight loss because I tried on a cute burgundy suit that I had gotten too fat for (it had a tailored jacket and matching pencil skirt), and it fit again. I was elated. This diet thing had actually worked! But soon I gave up my healthy habits. Having achieved a little bit of weight loss, I felt free from the torture of dieting and exercise, free to go back to my old ways. It wasn't long before I put the weight back on.
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