Some days it’s easy to be good, easy to make the right choices, easy to be active. Other days, not so much. Today was the latter. For whatever reason, all the sleep deprivation and stress as of late caught up with me, and I just felt totally worn down all day. I had taken fitness a little more easy the last couple days, recovering from soreness, but today all desire was gone to get moving again.

The challenge of the kitchen seemed to hit me harder than usual. I have been so busy lately, I really haven’t had time to be tempted. Yet today, as tired as I was, I didn’t want to do anything, and thus the desire to eat was stronger than usual. I’d pace the kitchen, trying decide if I wanted to eat, what if I needed to eat, and if so, what to eat.

Thankfully, in efforts to make better eating choices, I had stocked my kitchen with healthy options. We still have a few remnants of less great options, but I was able to avoid them. I attempted to make kale chips for the first time. The first batch was too salty, and the second batch was overcooked, but overall, I do think they’re worth trying again. I had a sugar free fudge pop help quench the chocolate craving.

As far as activity, David was interested in being active after he got off work, so I played our Ring Fit game with him for a bit. After dinner, walked to the park, and in order to keep my dilly-dallying 5-year-old on task, I’ll routinely challenge him to races to different landmarks. It helps move him along, and it also pushes me to pick up my feet.

In the end, I powered through and made the right choices. Ultimately, planning ahead helped me make the right food choices, and being motivated by my husband and son helped me make better activity choices. I may not have gotten much done around the house or “adulting”, but I am a day closer to accomplishing my goal. Still a work in progress.

Every morning, I set the alarm to get Elliot up and ready for school. Some days, baby girl sleeps past the time E gets on the bus, giving me time to workout, and other times she’ll get up shortly after her brother.

Today was one of those confusing days. She fussed a bit after I came downstairs, but she managed to calm herself back to sleep. I put on my workout clothes, got E on the bus, crossed my fingers, and prepared to do my Ring Fit.

No sooner than I turned on the TV, little miss started stirring again. I was in the position every parent finds themselves…do I try to continue, or do I call it quits?

I determined in that moment she would likely be okay for at least long enough for me to do a few minutes. I figured doing something, no matter how short, was better than doing nothing. Sure enough, she settled herself down, and I got a full 10 minutes done before getting the princess beckoned.

I’m usually an “all or nothing” kind of person, but fitness doesn’t have to work that way. 10 minutes here and there can still get you to your goals. I’ve found taking that time to better myself ultimately makes me a better mom. I still plan to finish my workout later, but for now, I’m going to get some breakfast and enjoy the morning with my special lady.

I’ve said it before that the laws of inertia are at play when it comes to health and especially fitness. An object in motion tends to stay in motion; an object at rest tends to stay at rest. I have found these both to be true in my life. I was never active as a kid. I loathed PE, and some of my most traumatizing childhood memories come from it. Dance was a way that I could exercise and not hate life…I still remember “sweating to the oldies” as an 8 year old. I was so excited in one of the sequels that they had a kid in the cast; I had big dreams of that being me some day. (insert groan emoji)

I didn’t start taking fitness seriously until after my surgery 7 years ago. Even then, my main motivation initially was to prevent needing additional surgeries for skin removal, not because I innately wanted to exercise. To my surprise, it became something I not only enjoyed but also obsessed over. I would lift weights an hour in the morning, and then I’d often catch a zumba or yoga class that same afternoon. I made my own rotations from exercises I learned from my free training sessions provided by the gym so as not to get bored.

Fast forward to after I had Elliot, exercise stopped completely. I struggled hard those first months of motherhood. Not sleeping, breastfeeding challenges, working fulltime, and commuting 40 minutes, I felt like I had no energy or time for me. Thankfully after a little over a year, one of my closest friends from childhood who lived only 15 minutes away started working out with me. I was back in motion. I didn’t work out the same level that I did before Elliot, at least not at first, but I was moving again. I got up at 5am and made it happened, and I felt better for it.

Fast forward again, I had a rough pregnancy with Margaret, and I totally fell out of my fitness routine. Where

I stayed diligently working out until two days before giving birth to Elliot, once I fell out of the routine with Margaret, I felt like an object at rest. Nothing could drive me to get moving again.

So here I am, just over a year after giving birth, and I’m ready to move again. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of not having the energy to chase my son. While I have spent most of my life around this weight or higher, this is the first time I truly feel it. My main motivation the last two times I lost weight was entirely with the hopes of pregnancy. Trying to conceive for 3 years took so much emotional energy that I don’t intend to do so again. This time is different. This time I’m doing it for me.

I’m on day 3 of being an object in motion, and I can feel the momentum building. Before Margaret got up this morning, I did a half hour of my RingFit game. This evening I walked a mile before the rain just because it was so nice out and I wanted to be moving. As I write, I’m sitting here eating my carrots and hummus, having had another good food day. Hunger and temptation is still there, but I am working through it. It just feels good to be going the right direction again. Rome wasn’t conquered in a day, and this weight wasn’t gained in a day. It takes 18 days to form a habit…I’d say I’m on the right track.

My last post is from nearly 10 months ago, filled with my plans and aspirations to get going again. As many of you have experienced in covid, those aspirations fell flat. Baby struggled with sleep, work got stressful, Elliot needed increasingly more attention….in short, taking care of myself fell to the bottom of the priority list. So many times I wanted to sit down and write here, my sounding board, but the shame of failure kept me from doing so.

The scale continued to move up, slowly but surely, and I’m finally ready to take this seriously again. Margaret just turned one last month and is sleeping better and is more independent during the day. After spring break, Elliot will be in school 5 days a week. My work has plans to cut back some of my hours, for which I am grateful. All that leaves me time to be able to reprioritize my health.

I’ve taken a few steps to help me jumpstart my weight loss this time around. Some of you may have mixed feelings on appetite suppressants. When I lost a significant amount of weight after Elliot was born, it was started with the use of these. I didn’t take them for long, and they were able to help me shrink my stomach and utilize my lapband as it was intended. My band is to a point that I don’t want to get it adjusted again, as I already have issues with getting stuck on my food, but my appetite is as high as it has ever been. I started on a low dose phentermine today, and I hope it’ll help me getting my hunger back to a normal point.

Many people believe that weight loss surgery and the use of pharmaceutical weight loss is taking the easy way out. I will tell you first hand this couldn’t be further from the truth. Cravings do not go away on their own. Neither route stops you from the emotions that cause you to overeat. For those of us with lifelong weight struggles, for the most part we get to this point because of an unhealthy relationship with food. In the past, I wished my addiction was something that could be totally cut off, like alcohol or drugs, but there’s no going “cold turkey” quitting food. (They call that anorexia…)

One thing I know will help me this time around is that my husband is my partner in this. Lately, he has started taking his own health seriously, so my desire to make that easier for him will help drive me as well. With both of us making this commitment, we can start clearing out the house of temptations and filling it with better choices. Grandma’s house will always be a struggle, but we’ll just have to make good decisions before going over each day…

The biggest thing for me this time is having a plan. I have set some ground rules on food for myself, but I will also not be so rigid that I can’t live. I can give more details on that in the future for you all if that would be of help.

As far as fitness, I am gradually doing things to get more active. For Christmas, I started playing the Nintendo Switch video game called Ring Fit, which has helped get me started. It’s a lot of fun and makes a video game a workout. With the weather getting nice and our local park reopening, I have been making the 1.5 mile round trip to the playground with the kiddos (including my 20-pounder on my back!). I hope by this summer the gym will reopen with childcare, as I’d like to make a daily habit of that again.

One last step I took was starting a DietBet to hold myself accountable. For those of you unfamiliar with it, you join a game for a certain amount of money, have 4 weeks to lose 4% of your bodyweight, and if you succeed, you split the earnings with the other winners. It gives an extra money motivation to make good choices! I made about $30 last time I did it.

I’m serious about it and am ready for a change. I want to be able to chase my son around the yard again, to climb and jump and be an active mom. I debated on writing this blog entry now and not publish it until I knew I was good to stick with my plan, but I am going to ask you all to provide another level of accountability for me. It took me a couple years to get the weight off after my first pregnancy, and I don’t anticipate this going quickly.

Thanks for my old faithful readers, as well as those of you who are just now joining me on this journey. My hope is to document my journey to health for you all. It won’t be easy, I can’t promise I’ll be perfect…actually, I guarantee I won’t be. It’ll be raw and honest. I want to start writing more regularly, so if there are discussion points you would like to read about, please let me know. Hang with me through this. After all, I am still a work in progress.

It has been since October since I last posted. Why has that been? (No…not just because of the baby!) Honestly, I have been a disaster in the food and fitness department basically since I found out I was pregnant last June. I had planned that if I got pregnant, I would use this blog as a way to share how to be healthy throughout pregnancy, maybe tips for staying active and eating well, but that all went to crap. Part of me was ashamed. Part of me knew if I wrote on here it would mean I had to hold myself accountable, and I simply wasn’t ready for that.

I felt pretty lousy during the first trimester, keeping me from wanting to work out. That was followed by a second trimester during which I had bronchitis for over a month. Finally, the third trimester I just couldn’t break my bad habits. Then came the delivery, which (thankfully) was fast and furious, clocking 4.5 hours from water breaking to baby arriving. Similar to when I had my son, my bad eating habits only escalated after baby was born, compounded by the worldwide covid-19 pandemic into which my baby was born.

So here I am. About 65 pounds up from my lowest weight before pregnancy and up another 7 pounds from my highest pregnancy weight (yes, I said pregnancy). I’m not one of those mommas who loses weight while breastfeeding. It’s been a little less than three months since I had the baby, and I’m ready to get back to a healthy lifestyle.

Before you start commenting with “Don’t be so hard on yourself….you just had a baby…everyone gains weight!” or other well meaning supportive thoughts, hear me out. This past year has been a reminder as to just how easy it is to fall into an unhealthy lifestyle and just how challenging it is to get back to making good choices. Several times this pregnancy, I knew I needed to make a change, but the longer I made the wrong choices, the harder it got.

Enter postpartum quarantine living….Hungry all the time to the point of insatiable, breastfeeding challenges, not sleeping, holding the baby around the clock…making good choices just became harder and harder.

Starting a few weeks ago, I decided to start making some small changes, and each week I’m doing a little better. Things like switching from chips to stovetop popcorn, ice cream to sugar free popsicles. This past Tuesday, I both got an adjustment on my lap band to hopefully help with the hunger, as well as joined a weightloss accountability group started by a friend. I’m buying more fruit and vegetables, cutting back bit by bit on the foods that sabotage me. I’m still trying to figure out how to get more active with two demanding littles and no childcare, but my first step as been by wearing my Apple Watch again.

As the title of this blog says, I am a work in progress. My main motivation for losing weight the first and second times around since weight loss surgery was because I wanted to have children. After trying to conceive for nearly 3 years with my daughter, we’ve decided not to “try” again. If God blesses us with a third, beautiful. If not, we are happy. So my last big “why” to lose is no longer there.

So what is my why? Part of it is vain…I don’t like how I look now compared to before pregnancy…It’s hard for me to see pictures and videos of myself knowing I previously was at my lowest weight since childhood. Honestly, that’s not a big enough “why” for me though.

My main “why” is because I want to feel better. I want to be comfortable in my own skin. I love the feeling of being in shape, and it’s empowering to be in control of my food choices. Food addiction and lethargy have been my nemeses. Every day will be hard for a while, but each day I make good choices, the easier it will get.

If anyone has made it this far reading this post, thank you for your support. Thank you for your encouragement. If you’re in a similar boat, drop a comment letting me know you’re in this with me. I do plan to update this more often, sharing ways that I am taking steps towards health and fitness as a stay-at-home mom (who works from home part time).

I’ve been here before…I know what I need to do. Now it’s just a matter of doing it. I’m not seeking perfection…just progress.

Not going to lie, the main reason I haven’t been publishing much these past couple months has been from guilt. Alas, none of you are here to judge, and my main objective of creating this blog was to be transparent in hopes other people might relate, and so here I am!

This is the second time I’ve been pregnant, and both times have been in somewhat similar circumstances. I lost a significant amount of weight over a fairly lengthy amount of time, all the while feeling the pressure of continuing to either lose or maintain until actually conceiving. Both times after getting pregnant, I have proceeded to lose my mind when it comes to food.

The first trimester is a bit of a bliss in which I can eat all the junk and the scale doesn’t reflect it. I redevelop all the bad habits that got me to my original high weights without the consequences. Enter second trimester, and now the scale is starting to better reflect my eating patterns.

My first pregnancy, I was still a rockstar at the gym, working out 5-6 days a week. This time, I felt so terrible for the first 14-15 weeks that I fell completely out of the routine, and if I can make it to the gym a couple times a week that’s a huge victory.

So here I am, a place I’m sure many of you have found yourselves. I feel like the apostle Paul in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Granted, in the moment, I obviously don’t hate the food I’m eating, and I’m enjoying that extra sleep I get in the morning in lieu of exercise. I know in my head that I need to eat better and move more. I know in my head exactly what I need to do. It’s that process of translating thought into action that is the challenge.

I love my current life situation – I live across the street from my grandmother, and we spend a lot of time at her house. What I don’t love is the insane amount of junk food around her house and how my self control goes completely out the window as soon as I walk in the door. I’m pretty good about keeping junk out of our house, but as much time we spend there, even if I have a perfect day, I’ll often sabotage myself in a matter of minutes after arriving.

I understand the root of my challenges. My “why” doesn’t outweigh my “why not”. While trying to conceive, my “why” was always in front of me, pushing me forward, keeping me honest. My “why” turned into routine and good habits. And even though I understand in my head and heart that it’s better for the baby for me to eat well and move more, it’s so hard for me to break those patterns.

If you’re still hanging with me throughout this post, maybe you have some things that have worked for you for breaking bad habits, and I’d love to hear them. For me, it’s going to take some basic steps. I’m making new habits, new routines. It’s still hard for me to get up early in the morning with the pregnancy, and at night I’ll still occasionally feel like junk, so I’m planning different times to exercise.

I’m off Mondays and Fridays, so I’m going to start making a point of exercising during the day, preferably after dropping the boy off school. My mom picks up my son from school the middle days, so I’ve asked if she can watch him a little longer on Tuesdays and Thursdays for me to hit the gym after work. Thus far, I’ve only really had the energy for 30-40 minute workouts, but it’s something. I hope to rebuild my stamina back to an hour, but I know it’ll take time.

As for food, I’m still struggling, but at least I’m starting to make some better plans. I’m getting back to cooking at least a couple times a week, and when we pick up food, I’m trying to make better choices overall. I’m trying to cut my chocolate milk from two glasses to one a day. 😀 My biggest challenge this pregnancy has been not wanting leftovers, which up until the past 4 months have been my life. I keep modifying and adjusting, and eventually I’ll get there.

Thank you for making it to the end of this post! I know I set out with this blog to show the ways that I’ve been striving to be a healthier person, and honestly, this past few months have been a slump in that. At the same time, I’ve never claimed to be perfect, I just continue to be a work in progress.

Mission accomplished! I worked out for an hour at the gym this morning. I’m finally having times between the ick feelings that aren’t so bad, so trying to get moving a little more.

Fitness is such a frustrating thing. You work your tail off for months and months, get into the best shape of your life, you have a month when you do can do next to nothing, and then you feel like you’re starting completely over when you get back at it. It sometimes makes me wonder what’s the point, but then I remember how much better if feel when I am moving, when I am active.

So today I got on the elliptical for 15 minutes to start, heart rate and pace much slower than usual, and felt like I’d run a marathon. I followed up with a half hour on seated weight machines, for which my weights have dropped pretty significantly on some, and then I did 15 minutes stationary bike.

The thing I just have to keep telling myself is that I am now growing a human, and this human is sucking a lot more strength out of me than the first one did.

Perhaps you’ve gotten sick, had extra stress in life, or any of a thousand other excuses not to workout. The hardest part is putting on the exercise gear and getting your butt moving. If it’s 15 minutes, that’s 15 minutes more than being on the couch. If you’re too sick to do anything, know this too shall pass and you’ll have a chance to move again. Wherever you are, try to make yourself a priority, even if only for a small window of time, and know you’ll be glad you did.

Now for a shower, load of laundry, and probably a date with my couch! Now just to get that eating back under control…One thing at a time!

I’ve not been doing so great at this “blogger” thing. I’ll periodically get inspired for a post, only to have the day or something steal away my time, and then once I can sit down it’s a week later and the thought is no longer relevant. Yet here I am, thanks to a loyal “fan” who noticed my absence and sent a note checking in on me.

It’s been a challenging couple months. I’m not going into the details of it all, but I basically spent a good amount of time trying to figure out my up from down, left from right. The quality of both my eating choices and fitness during this phase has been hit and miss, though not the worst I’ve seen.

We just got back from a lovely vacation to Dauphin Island, Alabama, during which I ate all. the. food. Often, I start planning a vacation with high aspirations of making sound nutritional choices, but that typically crumbles during the long car ride. I woke up early the first morning in our condo, and I managed to spend an hour in the fitness center before everyone woke up. Another day, my husband and I played tennis, for which the courts were conveniently located on the 3rd floor roof of the place we stayed (only lost one ball!). Other than that, most of my other fitness was spent walking to the beach or playing with our son in the pool.

Could I have made better choices for my health? Absolutely. Is the scale showing the consequences of my bad behavior? You betcha. Do I feel guilty? No, not really! I really admire people who have their food and fitness on point most of the time, but I’ve come to realize I will never be that person.

So today, even after both me and the boy slept in, and even though I only ended up having 40 minutes to utilize the gym-provided childcare, I got a workout in. I went shopping, bought a bunch of healthy things, and then came home to spend about an hour prepping for one of my favorite healthy meals that I’ll cook tonight – chicken fajitas, complete with bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes. And now here I am, writing about things, because ultimately I know this is good for my soul.

I’m not going to promise this week will be perfect with food or fitness or this blog for that matter, but I am going to do my best to make good choices most of the time. We’ll just keep taking this journey one day at a time!

This past Christmas, my hubby got me an Apple Watch. He knew how important fitness has been to me lately, and he thought I might appreciate an activity tracker. I didn’t think it would be much more than a pedometer, but it actually has given me some challenging goals to complete. Due to my intrinsic competitive nature, I’ve worked hard to complete them.

Each month gives a unique goal. Last month was exercise all 30 days for a minimum of 30 minutes. It was a struggle, but I made it happen. This months goal was to travel 180.3 miles, or an average of 5.8 miles a day. Now, for my running friends, this would be no biggie. And I typically log 12-14k steps a day, but my main workouts are generally strength training. So this was a big stretch for me.

About a week ago, I figured all was lost. I’d had a few days of less than 5 miles/day, and it looked like in order to make my goal, I’d have to go 7 miles a day. I’d pretty much thrown in the towel, but my internal competitive nature kicked in.

So one morning when the I was up early, I walked to the park and walked/jogged two miles. Another day I took the boy another two miles around the neighborhood. I played tennis and walked in the evening after already doing a 45 minute boot camp that morning.

The last couple days, I parked as far as I could from work, and then every time I needed to use the restroom I would take a long out-of-the-way route. I’d even pace during the two minutes of my electric toothbrushing! I found whatever way I could to get just a few extra steps.

And it all paid off! I made my goal.

And it got me thinking. My main goal for initially losing weight, and now to lose weight again was for to bring this little man into the world, as well as the hope of giving him a sibling. Yet given the challenges we’ve faced in not getting pregnant these past couple years of trying, it’s made me realize I need some other attainable goals.

I’m not seeking a certain number on the scale at this point, and for this past month, my silly watch has been what has kept me pushing forward. What are your goals? I hope to define some more soon, but in the meantime, I’ll see what my watch tells me to do for the next month. 😂