Pictures

I was going through some old pictures on the computer the other day looking for photos of the kids to put in the picture frames I have when I stumbled across several pictures of me from before I lost the weight and I was really surprised at what I saw.  I have my weight loss timeline but still, I don't usually think about it.  Reality hit me hard.  I realized how far I have come, how much better I look now.  How much more I can do now.  I don't spend the day lying around the house exhausted, I don't dread exercise or taking the kids out or going hiking.  Life is much more livable and much more enjoyable. I realized how much happier I really am now that I have lost the weight and it helped me to come a little closer to loving myself and loving my body and being proud of myself for the hard work that I have done and what I have accomplished.  So often we get caught up in where we want to go, that we don't realize how far we have come.  I was so focused on getting down to 140 and into the 130s that I never stopped to appreciate where I am now.  I don't have my dream body, but I do like my body.  The whole 30 has helped me get past a huge hurdle and has started to help me learn how to eat properly for the rest of my life without dieting, without counting calories.  Learning to trust my body and my hunger signals, learning to resist cravings and temptations.  Learning how much to exercise and when to exercise.  For the past year and a half I have been exercising so much that I would just be wiped out the rest of the day and I spent the better part of it exhausted because I would expend all my energy exercising.  Not anymore.  I used to workout 6 days a week and I think it's time to let go of that.  There is so much more to do during the day now, so many adventures to find and to take the kids on.  So much to teach them, and so much fun to be had in the meantime.  And being with the kids, and really interacting with them is very active and is a workout in and of itself, I just couldn't hardly do it before because I was so tired from my two and a half hours of exercise.  But you see I never got anywhere with my weight, which just goes to confirm something I already knew.  It really is how you eat that determines your size, not how much you exercise.  Doing the Whole 30 has helped me let go of using exercise to lose weight and to burn more calories so I could eat more.  And If I'm not working out to burn calories to lose weight and eat more then why am I working out?  Like I mentioned in a few posts back, I like working out.  I enjoy Zumba, I enjoy moving my body and getting sweaty and feeling like I accomplished something and just feeling happy.  Exercise makes me happy, moving my body makes me happy and I am so thankful that I have been able to come this far.  And I do hope that I will be able to continue to lose weight, but I have come to a place where it is much less important to me.  I have FINALLY come to the place where I really just want to be healthy and happy.  And as long as I am eating healthy, and I have the energy I need to do the things I want to do, that makes me happy.

June 2012

July 2012

August 2012

Pictures are from right when I barely got pregnant with Chloe so I had been loosing weight from Lily's pregnancy.  As you can see I'm still very heavy.  I only got to the threshold of obese/overweight (175) with trying to lose weight after Lily was born and then I fell off the bandwagon and by the time June 2012 came around I was back in the 190s.