Every day and every effort is amazing

This has not been the smooth ride I though it would be.

The first time I got healthy, it was amazing. I am realizing now that part of why it was amazing was that it all surprised me. The weight loss, the strength, and the feeling that I can do it was all so new that it was incredibly motivating.

This time, I have the feeling of "I should be able to do this". Every pound lost is being met with a "finally" by me instead of a "yay this is incredible." It's not all new and novel. It's old news, and its difficult.

This is a mistake. Expectations that are being put on me without any positive affirmation are not ok.

We all do this, I once heard this concept be called "the tyranny of the shoulds"

I should be thin

I should be able to do this easily

I should be eating healthy

and

I should be thrilled about eating healthy and exercise.

But what we want to move towards is a balance between positive motivation and acceptance:

This may not be as easy this time, and thats ok

My body may not be ready for a hard amount of intense exercise, and that's ok.

I may struggle and feel unmotivated at times, and thats ok (as long as I don't too badly self sabotage the health goals I'm trying to meet)

I accept that with each baby it might get harder,
I accept as I get older it might get harder,
I accept that there may be other things going on in my life right now that are a higher priority than healthy food and exercise on any given day

I need to shower love and acceptance on myself, on my situation, and not a sense of disappointment.

While at the same time remembering every morning:

I love my body and I need to keep it healthy
I feel so good after I exercise
I feel so good after a day of healthy eating and giving my body what it needs
I feel so good about myself when I'm able to fit into my clothes
I want to be able to run faster and without pain which most definitely means I need to slowly lose more weight.

It's a balance, good days, hard days, lots of exercise, letting my body rest, feeling motivated, feeling done with it

And thats ok.

Let the journey towards health continue

Sometimes, when you just feel like hiding from your health

It would be easy to say I had an excuse....

An excuse for not eating as healthy as I was before, an excuse for gaining more weight than I should have, and an excuse for not blogging.

And I did, I was pregnant, gave birth, and then started to take care of a beautiful baby boy, Thank G-d.

But that's no real excuse. If anything when you're pregnant and nursing you should be eating more healthfully, maybe slightly bigger portions, because your baby needs you.

No, I just felt like I couldn't worry about it for awhile, like I was too tired to try for a bit, and too scared of the accountability to blog while the numbers on the scale went up and up. I felt like hiding and not thinking about it, which is pretty much what I did.

The good news, not all the work went out the window. I did not start eating white bread again, I found I didn't even like the taste of it anymore. I still ate a lot of salad, broccoli, avocado, and green beans with a lot of my meals. And perhaps the biggest change I saw was that in previous pregnancies I lived off of bagels, every morning and sometimes even twice a day, during my nauseous stage. But this time, besides for the occasional bagel, I stayed committed to not letting that fat loving food become my main stay. I exercised through the pregnancy (only eventually stopping because of a strained ligament which became quite painful towards the end). All in all it would not be unfair of me to say that I succeeded in so many ways that I wouldn't have previously.

But in so many ways I let go. I ate unplanned foods and ridiculously unplanned amounts. I snacked again at night. And some nights I just ate wacky mac along side my kids because I was too exhausted to make myself anything different.

In the next few months I plan on really trying to take a look at what happened, what went wrong, how could I do it differently if I were in that situation again, and how would I help other people get out of that if they were going through it.

But ultimately I wanted today to write about two main points I am coming out with.

1. You are going to go through bad or hard spells sometimes, and the quicker you can accept it without beating yourself up about it, the quicker you can move on. Just because you're slipping, doesn't mean the whole thing is going down the drain- hold on to whatever you can, and don't adopt the mentality of "well I'm already going down hill, pass me the whole box of donuts"

2. Its time to begin again. I have been nervous about this day for a long time, but looking forward to it too. I yearned to be back on the wagon, and waited patiently for the energy to get my health life into an organized form. May 4th I started. Hello again weight watchers, Hello again exercise 4-5 days a week, hello again weight loss competition with one of my brothers in law, hello meal plans on the fridge, and hello counting my cups of water. Though I'm exhausted every night, I can honestly say I missed you. I'm taking care of myself, and I will get back down to the weight again in a healthy, slow, and in the right way for my body.

Lastly, though again not entirely his fault, My dearest baby Tuvi- you were worth every pound of it.