The 15 Pound Difference

Most people will tell you what it feels like to lose 15 pounds, or 50 or 100 and that is very fascinating to read.  I often read those posts wishing that were me, and that I could just get off the rest of the weight, be done with my journey.  But my own journey turned out differently than I had hoped or expected.  We have all gained the weight, we know how to do it, we know how it feels, but how many of us really think about it and evaluate it.  Since I gained 15 pounds back after losing 68 pounds and then I am trying to lose that weight again I have noticed several things in how I feel and how my body moves within those 15 pounds.

1.  The biggest thing I have noticed is that my legs are harder to lift.  They feel heavier and I have to put forth a lot more effort to lift them up when I am exercising.  If I do high knees or in Zumba if we ever just lift our legs up, it is much harder than 15 pounds ago. 

2.  Along that line, jumping is much harder too.  When I was doing Turbo Fire with my sister the other day and also a month ago I noticed just how hard it was to do the air jumping jacks, and burpees?  Forget about it, holy cow those were hard.  I could no longer move like I used to be able to 15 pounds ago.  My fitness level certainly was not where it used to be even though I had continued to exercise throughout the entire weight gain. 

3.  My stomach felt sick all the time and it reminded me of when I was pregnant with Chloe.  At the time I contributed it to being pregnant.  I felt sick through the whole thing, now I wonder if I felt sick because I was eating junk and my diet was terrible, or if I was actually sick from the pregnancy.  I'm sure I legitimately had morning sickness for a while but then I probably just felt crappy from eating crappy.  That whole saying "you are what you eat" has really hit home with me now.  If I eat bad, I feel bad, if I eat good, I feel good.  When I was gaining weight these last few months I felt sick all the time.  My stomach was queasy and I went to bed thinking I was going to throw up nearly every night.

4.  Don't even get me started on energy!  Over the last several months my energy has been non-exsistant.  It was a struggle to do anything, my workouts were tough and I often skipped them.  I didn't do as much with the kids, the house wasn't very clean.  All I wanted to do was lie around and do nothing because I didn't have any energy to do anything because all I was eating was processed foods, and simple carbs and simple sugars.

5.  My pants don't fit.  I had to pull out some old pants from earlier when I was losing weight because the pants I bought at the beginning of the season, I couldn't button them up anymore.

After getting back on track for 3 weeks, I have lost 5 pounds and I am starting to feel better.  My diet has improved and so my energy has greatly increased.  Skyrocketted in fact.  This is something that I was really surprised about.  After about the first week I really started feeling better, my stomach stopped feeling queasy and I had a lot more energy to do things like grocery shopping, playing with the kids, cleaning, cooking, and doing my exercise.  Of all the differences I have noticed these are the two that have meant the most to me.  This really is a journey to be healthy.  When you are healthy you just feel better which makes you happier and a more pleasant person.  I am glad I did not give up on this journey and this weight gain has taught me something very important about weight loss.  Even though we are trying to lose weight, it's really the side effects that we are looking for: feeling better, having more energy, and living a better life.

Then: About 145 around July 2014

Now: About 155

I can definitely tell a difference in my face, and also you can see my love handles poking out in the bottom picture on the right hand side.  I'm going to get back down to where I was.  And then I will pass it.  I'm ready.  153.4 this morning, official weekly weigh in is Tuesday.