Week One is Almost Done!

Starting to exercise again after a long hiatus has not been easy, though not necessarily difficult. Sore, though. :0)

This week has not been a bad exercise routine - basically it has been a prep week for week 3. Basically 4 days of moderate walking for 20 minutes, and then 3 days of moderate walking for 30 minutes. I really felt it the first day, but today was very good! I have got to start doing pilates and yoga a couple of times a week in addition, though - I'm very stiff, which I normally get if I'm not doing any sort of cross-training, which I'm not at this stage!

The hardest part has been pacing myself - I want to do more, but I know I'm a bit obsessive sometimes, and I want to be able to build up my endurance so this becomes a lasting thing. I also struggle with shin splints, so I'm trying to be proactive to prevent it. The extra 80 pounds I need to lose didn't come on overnight, and neither will it come off that fast!

The emotional pondering have hit me hard though - my walking time is a very reflective time for me, and I see many ways how where I am at spiritually parallel where I am with my weight. This past year and half has been, overall, a very dark time for me. Going through the emotionally havoc of having a baby, then grieving our kids at Calvary Home as we moved to Georgia... I remember crying months later that I just wanted to go "home". Jonathan gentle reprimanded me that home is where our family is, and that was just it - my kids there were part of our family and part of my heart had been ripped out. I could not heal it. Then as things just did not work with Jonathan being a SAHD for his well being, and I could not handle working full time because of the sacrifices I had to make against my family; to say we both struggled with depression during that time is too simple of statement.

I have sensed that this period in our lives, in my life personally, is coming into a healing time, and slowly but surely, I see myself taking slow steps back to God - not necessarily to where I was, but to where He has planned for me and our family. I'm not sure where or what that is, but old desires and passions that He initially planted in my heart are slowly coming back to the surface again. In the meantime, I am trying to simply just be obedient to Him, in all areas!

Back in the Saddle Again

Debbie here.

It's been five months since I've last updated this site, which I detest myself for. But I'm back, and I'm posting again. A bit hesitantly, but here I am.

Jonathan and I created this blog to track our weight-loss journey. However, this journey has not been something I've been dealing with just since having Emily, but since I was preteen. Psychologically, it was probably a combination of things - mom's death, my inability to process our family changes well, being a total uncool social outcast in school, and the list could go on. It's been almost a 20 year struggle for me.

I've had serious bouts of weight-loss in the past - after college I was motivated to lose 30 pounds when I hit the 200 pound mark on the scale, mostly through a Bible study called The Lord's Table, and I was keeping it off. I was jogging almost everyday and loved it. But four months before I was to get married, I got mono and was put on exercise restriction. I took two weeks to recover, but relapsed two months later, and it took even longer to start feeling better that time around, especially with the wedding stress. I wasn't allowed to exercise at all (besides casual walking), and was frustered when the pounds started adding on, and that I wasn't looking how I wanted to look at our wedding, but instead focused on that that day was about Jonathan and I, and not my physical appearance. The stress ate away at my discipline towards food, and all the weight I had lost I gained back plus an extra 30 pounds.

A year after Jonathan and I got married, we wanted to start trying for a baby. A few months into it, we still weren't pregnant, and I got serious about my weight and health. To this day, I believe it was the combination of forty pounds of weight loss (this time with The New Atkins Nutritional Approach) and chiropractic wellness that finally was the ticket to me getting pregnant. I was very happy with the manageable weight gain during pregnancy until I hit the 9th month, and then hello toxemia and bed rest. My last weight-in prior to delivery, I was 250 pounds, though the last 15 of those were mostly water from the toxemia and kidney malfunction. The first twenty-five of those 250 came off in the first six weeks, but then it stopped.

It has stilled stopped.

Emily is eighteen months old next week. And I've been fluxing ten pounds over and under that 225 mark. I tried to go back onto Atkins, but with my crazy work schedule last year, I could not stick with the food restrictions. Add to the difficulties we've had personally since Emily was born, and I started turning to food again to soothe my heart. I also had not been able to get back into a stable exercise routine again - I've missed jogging and Pilate's, but being so out of shape, I didn't want to get motivated.

But then I took two our of girls clothes shopping last week. And in the dressing room I saw my full self in those 3-way store mirrors and it was awful. Fat frumpy housewife. And there were my girls, beautiful and energetic while trying on new dresses, the same age I was when I started to gain weight - girls that are currently going through the trying emotional times that I similarly went through at their age. I saw me then and saw my now, and it was a knife in my heart.

I have to change.

For them, for Emily, for Jonathan, for myself, for my relationship with God. So I've started changing a few things. First, learning to once again be disciplined with my eating - learning to eat when I'm hungry and stop while I'm full and seeking God to fill my heart instead of food when the cravings come. I'm also watching my nutrition more closely. Secondly, I've started walking again in the mornings and have really enjoyed the peacefulness of it though I can't believe I'm starting a new walking regime in the cold and wet months of the year! I've started on a twelve-week journey to be able to start jogging again. It's been tempting to do more than is recommended at this point, because I know what I was able to do, but I also know this is something that needs to be a permanent change.

So it's Tuesday, and my day to weigh in, so here it is! Sorry this was a long post, but for once I think I need to stop hiding behind myself, and become accountable for what I've let myself become.

Starting weight (11/24/2009): 236
Last week's weight: 232
Current weight: 230
Total pounds lost: -6