Off we go into the wild blue yonder. . .

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

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.

Sunday, May 30, 2021

Shadow

All my kids are sick. It's nothing serious, just more annoying really. They just have little colds. It's enough that I am keeping them all home, but not enough that it keeps them from rough housing (rough trailering?) Elijah was the first one to get it first showing symptoms on Thursday. Next was Kent, and then Rachel. One thing about living in such a tiny space with active children, is we have to make a point to get out of the house everyday. Sometimes more than once a day. We have to find a way to get out and get their energy out in a constructive way, otherwise in comes out in destructive ways, for example, on Friday morning, what I thought was the boys playing nicely in their room together ended up with every inch of Kent's skin that was visible covered in marker.

He was being Shadow from Sonic, and was pretty darn proud of himself. Elijah also had various colors of marker on him (he claims Kent colored on him) but not nearly as bad or as black.

That being said, it's been a LONG few days for this mama.

Physical exertion is also a necessity for me. I've been having a lot of deep depression lately and it's been a struggle trying to I figure out all the best ways to handle it, but last week we all started waking up early and going to the local running track and running a mile. It has done WONDERS for my depression and has become something I depend on. Well, with all the kids sick, and our tiny space and my kids being who they are, I have also been unable to go out and run which and thrown me into "the depths of despair." Friday was so hard, and Saturday was harder. Thankfully my sweet husband was able to be home Saturday and he stepped up and went above and beyond because I wasn't capable of being mom for the day.

Thankfully, later in the day I was able to drege up enough fight to do the things I have learned that help. I got out of bed, took my vitamins, ate something healthy, drank a bunch of water and left everyone home and went for a run. Before I left, I couldn't stop the tears from streaming down my face. While I ran, the tears turned to sweat and I was able to work through some of my issues. A hot shower later and I was finally able to reach out and actually talk to my husband.

This month the depression has been so hard and so heavy. It hasn't been this bad for years! But inspite of the hard things, I've also learned a lot as is always the way with our trials, because if you don't learn, what is the point?

Often times when I'm struggling with depression, my patience goes way down, and my poor kids require A LOT of patience! Especially my boys. My lack of patience comes out as ugly. And I feel ugly inside when I act that way which then makes me disappointed in myself for acting that way which makes me less likely to be patient because I'm in this downward spiral that is really hard to get out of.

One morning, I was laying in bed and wondering, "How did Jesus do it? How did he put up with imperfect people with such patience when he was going through something really really hard." I pictured Him during the atonement when all he wanted was some support. He wasn't asking anything hard from his disciples, he just wanted them to stay awake while he was suffering. While he was doing this huge thing for them. And they didn't do it. He didn't tell or get angry. He accepted their humanness and let them sleep and I thought to myself again, "How did he do it?" And the answer came to me, it was love. Because of His pure love, he was able to find it in him to be able to be kind. To forgive those who persecuted and whipped and betrayed him. He was able to teach them when he was hurting, and reach beyond himself.

This may seem like a small thing, but to me it felt big. My depression didn't go away, and I wasn't suddenly filled with patience for my children, but it gave me a new perspective, and it gave me something to focus on when my kids are constantly challenging and pushing and testing my patience. Focus on how much I love them and how important they are.

The things I'm learning from my trials are so important to me and close to my heart and I have been feeling the push to share it with others, so there will be many posts like this in hopes that even one thing I've learned can help left someone else.

Saturday, May 29, 2021

3 Years!

I've been thinking about starting a blog. And then I remembered that once upon a time, I had a blog! Not the same type of blog I was thinking about starting, this was an updates on our family type of blog. A blog to keep my hubby posted on the kids while he was deployed. A blog for the grandmas to be able to see the kids because for the last 12 years we have lived a million miles away from home. This type of blog seems so 10 years ago. That was before Facetime and Marco Polo. Who has that type of blog anymore? No, the blog I was considering creating involved inspiration and happiness and joy for all. Book reviews and spiritual insights galore. But since this is the blog that I have, I suppose this blog will have to do for now, and since it has been 3 years since I did an update on my family, I guess an update is in order.

The easiest way to do this might me a timeline:

June 2018 ish: Jacob left the military and went back to school (eek!) He has been working part-time for the university he's been going to and working full-time to get his degree (computer science.) We tried to become approved for foster care and well, didn't. It was heart breaking for me at the time. I felt a lot of anger and sorrow. Looking back, I can see other ways we were blessed for not having done it, other children we were able to love and bless and care for which made a big difference to us and them.

Summer 2018

May 2019: We started babysitting a sweet 5 year old boy and a 3 month old baby girl. Their mama was working as a full-time nurse at the hospital and we got to have these kids in our homes all day long for 3-4 days a week. Their mama worked 12-14 hour days 30 minutes from where we lived. We grew so attached to these kiddos! We got to watch them for just over a year.

September 2019: A sweet friend of mine was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. She meant a good deal to me and to my children, especially to my Rachel. I had the privilege of being with her in the emergency room when she got the diagnosis. She had been taking care of her daughter who had had a stroke when she was 13 years old, and her two autistic grandsons. She moved within a week of the diagnosis back east where she was able to have some care at the end of her life from her son and his family. I started watching her two grandsons after school everyday until their single dad (also a good friend of ours) could get off of work. We did this for about 2-3 months.

March 2020: Everyone know what happens here, that's right, COVID. Jacob started working from home, but other than that and home church, our lives really didn't change a whole lot, except we found out how crazy the world really is and that we all hate wearing masks.

May 2020: We got COVID and lived.

August 2020: Kent was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD and Dysgraphia. That's been a wild ride all in and of itself and deserves its own blog post (or two or five).

September 2020: We knew that Jacob would be graduating the next semester and didn't want to be stuck with a house in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico when we were ready to move on. We listed the house for sale and it sold within a week! That definitely wasn't what we were expecting! Thankfully we still had our travel trailer (despite my best efforts to get rid of it), and in we moved.

October of 2020 is when we actually moved from New Mexico.

The next few months went something like a whirlwind. We spent a month visiting my sister and her family in Arizona, 3 months visiting family in Southern Utah, and then another two months back in Arizona. We all got COVID, again, at the end of our stay in Utah. This last month we have spent in Farmington, New Mexico and its been a doozy of a month, let me tell you. Filled with depression and parks and running and Jacob graduating and finishing one job and starting another.