cards from years past...

I love people asking questions about my transformation...I think honesty is how we grow and how we are able to help others on their fitness and health journey's.  

A newer member asked yesterday, "was your change gradual or was it all of a sudden?"

I answered, "a slow process, and I learned so much along the way and am still learning."

Because you see the workouts are EASY.  Some hate to workout and sweat, I LOVE IT!  I love to feel alive and able.  I love feeling stronger and pushing harder...and I love feeling drenched in sweat and shaking when it's over.  Crazy, right?  The eating?  Ugh.  I LOVED eating poorly.  And that's tough to admit and throw out there but it's so true.  And I justified with every ounce of my body that it was okay to eat somewhat poorly because I worked out.  Right?  SO WRONG.  

The eating would sabotage me time and time again.  It didn't matter how hard I worked out, I was consuming more calories in "healthy" foods than I was burning and they were NOT balanced at all.  

Here's a shot from our Christmas card in 2012.  

A perfect reflection of what I looked like working out AND eating "healthy"

Here's another from 2009.  I'd say this was a time where my husband and I had let it go.  All of it.  We ate like the typical family.  Not great but not as bad as it had been in my heaviest days.  We were "busy", we had 2 active boys, he was working shift work and I was teaching PE.  We were BUSY so we had an excuse?  Mac n cheese was an easy side dish to chicken, spaghetti and meatballs were okay because we were using "whole wheat pasta" disregarding the fact that we'd eat 2-3 times the portion size in one sitting.  In my mind, I knew.  But I was hungry.  That was a good excuse but it was learning that ALL things must be in moderation, not just sometimes.  That was and IS the hardest part of this journey for ME.  Always will be.  The food.  Learning to not associate my moods and emotions with the foods that I eat.  BUT it's a work in progress and each time I share my story and I use honesty, it gets me closer to the goals I have set for years to come.  I always remember where I started, where I sat in-between for so long.  My heaviest and unhealthiest times in my life were short, I spent most of my life looking as I did in the above picture and the one below.  A size 12 or 14, working out 5-7 times a week but eating TOO much of the "healthy foods".  I guess I reached a moment where I became FED UP with it.  FED UP with working so hard only to destroy that hard work with one meal of whole wheat pasta and some bites of chicken.  Whole wheat didn't make things healthy, what makes me healthy is eating for FUEL and nourishment NOT out of pleasure.  A HUGE DIFFERENCE that has taken me YEARS to figure out.  That's not saying you won't, but for me it's something I struggle with every day...

These days are FAR different and there's no guarantee on the rest of our lives but if I set a goal to always remember how I feel when I exercise and fuel properly with balance and control, then it's one more day I get to feel good, to feel strong and to feel unstoppable.  That's a gift.  One of THE greatest gifts that I can give myself and my family.  They want and need a strong Mom and Dad.  I need to be out there living life with them rather than off to the side because it's easier at a distance.  I need to be involved and enjoying life's moments that would've passed me right on by in my past.  I need to find comfort in love and my surroundings rather than through something so UNimportant like FOOD.  Food is Food.  I say that so often but it's something I repeat to myself frequently.  Don't give it more credit than that.  Each meal that you choose balance, celebrate that and be proud.  It's an accomplishment.  NEVER deprive.  It only brings on feelings of sabotage and failure.  You'll go so long depriving until you give in and go until you're physically sick.  Why do that?

Life can be SO MUCH more.

If you're the one that chooses to eat balanced and healthy but refuse to get out and MOVE.  Same rules apply.  It's a balancing act of BOTH.  Your body craves the exercise and the nutrition.  They go hand in hand and one won't truly work without the other...I'm living proof.