New Year Reflections

The start of a new year.  A time for reflecting on the past and preparing for the future.  This was me one year ago:

227

I was so very unhappy with myself.  Not just my weight but every aspect of my life.  Chloe's pregnancy was hard on me and I felt like I had lost my life.  I made a list of areas I wanted to improve on and it was not short, and encompassed almost everything under the sun and every area of my life.  I was miserable, and moderately depressed.  One year ago I had a decision to make: I could either wallow in self pity and continue to hate myself, or I could change and become the kind of person that I wanted to be... I chose to change.

This is me today:

153

Last year was a year of progress.  I did not hit a single goal I set for myself.  I did hit many milestones in my weight loss, but not my ultimate weight goal.  I've learned about healthy eating, I've found an activity that I love, I have become more active with Lily and adjusted to having two kids.  I've worked on playing my flute, I've learned about fashion and how to properly dress myself, I've joined a mom's group, met my neighbors, and made some new friends.  That is a lot to accomplish in one year.  I still don't feel like I am as good of a mom as I would like to be.  Lily still watches two movies a day and often logs time on the ipad  to boot.  I am still 30 pound from my goal.  I would like to hit 121 to make it an even 90 pounds lost and then have a maintenance range of 121-126.  I have not even hit my healthy weight range yet! I still want to increase my Pampered Chef business so our finances are not so tight, I need to make sure I find time to play my flute at least once a week to keep up my tone, my crafting supplies remain abandoned, and I need to work on building lasting relationships with the new people I have met.

I still have a long way to go, but I have come so much farther than I have left to go.  Twice as far in fact.  I have lost 60 pounds and I have 30 left.  That means that I have lost 30 pounds twice already, and I know I can do it again.  My goal for the new year is to lose about 5 pounds a month, giving myself 2 months to lose 10 pounds.  I was looking at my weight chart for last year and it took me about  two months every time to lose 10 pounds with a few exceptions.  (190 to 180 took me 3 months since that was Julia's wedding and my Birthday were back to back which essentially meant I took a month off of weight loss).

I have a lot of motivation to get me there too.  First, at the end of March my Sister-In-Law is getting married and I am bound and determined not to look fat in those photos!  My goal is to lose another 15 pounds by the wedding.  That will put me at about 137ish.  Second, my parents are getting professional family photos taken near the end of April and I would like to lose 20 pounds by this date which would put me around 132.  Still about 10 pounds over my ultimate goal, but 10 pounds is a lot closer than 30!  Plus, I won't be in the overweight category for the BMI so hopefully I will be looking pretty good.

To give myself a jumpstart on this goal, I have decided that I need to detox my body after all the sweets from last month.  So January is going to be a month of no sweets.  Exactly the same as my last 30 day challenge (except I don't expect it to turn into 6 weeks this time!) I plan on getting back on track and eating healthy and not consuming any desserts or candy during the month of January.  Fortunately most of the country is also doing the same so it shouldn't be too difficult :-)

I meant to post this last night but I was over at my parent's house eating our amazing New Years Meal of Shrimp Curry and fruit salad.   I think this is the first year that I have not over eaten a this meal!  I had one serving of rice, one scoop of curry, one bowl of fruit salad (which would be healthy if it didn't have whipping cream (we whip our own cream for this fruit salad) mixed in with it) and one bowl of jello.  I didn't even have any bread, mostly because I forgot it was on the table.  With two kids to look out for I overlooked it, but that was just fine with me, I didn't need it anyway.  My sister Chase also made jalapeno poppers.  I ate one and then had to use the bathroom and while I was contemplating if I wanted to eat another one, everyone else ate them up for me so by the time I got back into the kitchen they were gone!  Well that took the decision out of my hands, and saved me a whole lot of points! (one jalapeno popper is 4 points!)  Everything was delicious and I am proud of how I handled myself and the things I chose and chose not to eat.  I wasn't deprived of anything and I didn't over indulge.  It was a great start to the new year.