50 pounds

Let's talk health for a few minutes. Physical health. I, like the other women in my family, (and to be honest, probably most other women in the world) have generally always struggled with weight fluctuations, and as much as I would like to blame it all on having babies, if I'm honest, it definitely started before that. I've gone through the cycles of exercise/eat healthy, lose the weight, reach a goal, stop exercising/eating healthy, gain the weight, hate my body, then exercise/eat healthy and repeat more times than I would like to admit, and to be honest, even after I've lost the weight, I would still compare my body to everyone else's and find it lacking.

Let's fast forward to the beginning of last year. I had been unhealthy (and not just because I was overweight) and having food and sugar issues for a while. My cute sister hosted a get healthy competition for my sisters, my mom, and my hubby. My goal of the competition was finally not about the number on the scale. My goal was to feel healthy and to heal my relationship with food. This became quite the journey for me. I knew that when I ate sugar (my weakness) I felt sick. Always. And not in a normal way.

   

 As I started my journey, I cut many different things out of my diet because the more I started listening to my body, the more it was telling me. My body doesn't like processed sugars or even sugars like honey that aren't processed but it loves fruit. It hates pizza 😱. Every single time I ate pizza, my heart rate would get really high. My body doesn't like other processed things that I used to love (like hot lime cheetos, and chocolate treasures, and airheads. I would get stomach aches when I had things with gluten and dairy and corn. It felt like the more I listened to my body, the less I could eat, and it was super frustrating trying to find things that were honoring to my body. But the more I listened to my body, and heard what it was telling me, the better I felt, and the pounds started coming off. 

My goal for the first time wasn't to lose the weight and to fit into a smaller size of jeans, it was to listen to do what it needed. During our 12 week competition, I lost 20 pounds. Before when I had done competitions like that, I worked hard during the competition and then eventually went back to my old habits, but this time I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to feel the way I felt before. I was so tired of food ruling my life and essentially ruining it because it was making me feel sick all of the time. 

    

Before: Feb 2020        After May 2020

I had other benefits during this time as well. During the months of this competition, my depression was gone. Completely. Even though my cycles have never been regular, I always knew when it was coming because the week before, I would have awful awful depression, but when I started this regimen of listening to my body, eating what my body really liked and needed, and getting out and moving my body, my mental health thrived!  

We finished our competition 13 months ago and since then I have lost another 30 pounds because I have been doing my best to really pay attention and honor the things my body tells me. If I'm hungry, I eat the snack. If I'm full, I don't finish the food. If I want a treat, I have one, my treats just look a little differently than they used to. If my body aches from sitting still for too long, I go for a walk. I feel like when I honor the needs of my physical body, my mental health does so much better. 

When I tried to diet or exercise to lose the weight, the change never stayed, and I would get discouraged when the number wouldn't change, and I was always comparing my body to everyone else and seeing where I came up short. It wasn't until I let that go, stopped comparing, and tried to get healthy for the sake of being healthy that I honestly started feeling better about me. And it wasn't until then, that the change stuck.

 Can I tell you how many times I've lost weight and kept my "fat clothes" in my closet because I didn't trust the change? It was a really big deal for me to actually get rid of all of the clothes I grew out of and I probably wouldn't have done it except that we moved into the trailer and space is extremely limited. I've never lost the weight and kept it off until I made the mental change. This is my journey and it looks different than anyone else's. My body is different than anyone else's. My experiences have been different and my life is different, and how glad I am that it is.