Exposing Myself to the World

Note: This is a long, extremely personal post. I am trying to lose weight on my own, without a "diet" buddy, without a workout buddy, without support from anyone. Answering solely to myself has not really worked for me in the past. I can stop losing weight and no one will ever notice. So, I have decided to make myself extremely vulnerable to you and anyone else who reads my blog. I have decided to let you into one of the most sensitive areas of my life. I feel like if I expose myself to the world, I will hold myself more accountable to follow through with changing myself.

Have you, or anyone you know, struggled with gaining and losing weight? I have ever since I became a mother, but mainly since I had Tayler 18 months ago.

I am a stay at home mom and ever since June, all of my college classes have been completely online. I haven't really had to get "dressed" for anything. Therefore, I hardly ever do my hair and makeup so I hardly ever look in the mirror. In addition, since I am always at home, my clothes are always comfy clothes with elastic waists. They stretch. Thus, I never grow out of my pants. As I evaluate my life, I think this has been a contributing factor to allowing myself to gain weight.

As I have gained weight, I have noticed the scale steadily moving up. However, I never really felt like I looked like I had gained a lot. A few months ago, I had to go buy a pair of slacks. I was shocked at what size I had to get. I didn't understand because I didn't feel like I looked like I was that size. Even though the scale was moving up and I had to buy a very big size (a size I have never gotten close to seeing before) it still wasn't hitting me how big I had gotten. I didn't think that I looked like I was that big.

It was not until I saw the following pictures of myself did I see and realize just how far I had let myself go. I am extremely embarassed to share these pictures, but this is me now. I cannot tell you how many times I have looked at this picture and asked myself "Is that REALLY what I look like!?!?" After seeing these pictures of myself, I knew I had to make a change.

(These pictures were taken last month when my husband and I took our kids to Sea World in San Antonio for my son's birthday.)

I have sat down and evaluated my life. How did this happen? How did I gain so much weight? These are the things I have come up with as reasons why I have gained so much weight.

- stress

- exhaustion

- lack of energy

- lack of time

- lack of a routine

- always putting everyone else before me

This past year has been very hard on me. I feel like I sacrified my health to be able to be a full time student from home and raise two small children.

In the past, I have tried several different diets. They were a quick fix, but they didn't teach me how to eat healthy longterm. I was never really taught how to cook. I have spent the past 2 weeks and will spend the next 2 weeks learning how to eat healthy, what to eat, how much of each food groups to eat, how to cook delicious but healthy food, etc.

In my last post, I wrote that one of my goals for 2011 is to lose 80 pounds. Another goal that I have is to lose 55 pounds by the time I graduate, which is May 14th.

As the top of my blog states, this is a journal of my life. I need to hold myself accountable and I feel like blogging about what I am going through will help me because I know someone somewhere out there is reading what I write.

So, what I would like to do is do a weekly or bi-weekly "weigh in" update on my progress. How much weight I have lost that week, any struggles that I had, any accomplishments, etc. From time to time, I would also like to post pictures of noticeable changes.

If you got to the end of this post, I appreciate the time you took to read this and I look forward to sharing my future progress with you. Thank you for holding me accountable. :)

Love,

Tammy