My Journey to the Healthiest me, while Pregnant

Today I have a story to tell you.  It is about me and my journey to health.  It definitely isn't finished yet, but these days I need a little motivation to keep on going so I figured if I wrote it down for all to read it would help me "feel the pressure" so to speak and help me stay on track with my goals that will hopefully one day lead to a healthier me.  It is kind of a long story so I have broken into a couple posts.  Today I will focus on the "why"  What made me decide to start this health journey, when did I start, why did I start, and what is my ultimate goal?

A lot of thought, pondering, and ultimately inspiration has gone into my journey already and I assume that there will be more of each as I take each baby step.  I feel this journey fits me, my stage in life, and my personality perfectly.  I have tried a few other things in the past and failed, this is the first time that I feel like I might actually be able to reach my goals and desires. Please feel free to read along.  I have loved reading others health/success stories with food and fitness out there in blogger land and many of them gave me the motivation to start my health journey.  So maybe this one will inspire someone also to stick to THEIR goals.  I promise I will try to not make it too boring. ;)

Lets see, we will begin with a little background.  Deep down I have never really been ecstatic with the way that I looked (ok maybe in 6th grade).  There have been times that I have felt satisfied, but never really happy.  I believe most women are this way.  We are always comparing ourselves to others whether in a "wow I look so much better than you" way or in a "I wish I could look like you" way.  This concept has been the main reason why I haven't written this post in the past few months.  I always felt like even though I was liking my new lifestyle and results, MY story was never good enough to write.  But today I decided that this is MY blog and I want to write it, who cares if no one reads it. :)  So please be nice, even though I gathered up enough courage to write it down does not mean it is not a tender topic (HELLO we are talking about a woman's weight here, the most sensitive subject known to man!).  In 2010 when I was training for my first and only marathon I thought "great, now I can get the body I want"  Well even at the end of race day I STILL didn't love my body.  Although I look back now with my post baby body and would LOVE to have that body again.  Perspective right?

Soon after the race I was blessed to be able to get pregnant with Adalyn. (here is a picture of her cuteness just for fun. :)

I gained quite a bit of weight when I was pregnant with Adalyn and swelled a lot (I thought the swelling was from the heat since she was a summer baby, but I was wrong).  I was working full time and we were in the middle of moving out of state so my health was not my highest priority at that time.  I ate what I wanted (kind of with the myth idea that you can eat anything you want when you are pregnant because you are going to gain weight anyway) and hardly exercised at all (just walks around the neighborhood in the 3rd trimester).  Here I am 7 weeks pregnant with Adalyn (oh I wish my hair was long again)...

Then here I am at 35 weeks pregnant with her...

 And here I am the day we brought her home from the hospital on August 13, 2011...

Yep I swelled a lot (if you had only seen my feet), but by the end of her pregnancy I was REALLY motivated to get my body back and workout hard.  So six weeks after I had her I jumped back into exercising and working out.  It didn't work, I will explain more in a later post why it didn't work (it isn't really that big of a secret, we all know that it takes more than exercise to lose weight).  But for now we will just say that it didn't work and I only lost some of the extra baby weight that I had gained by the time we excitedly found out that I was expecting baby #2 (no it wasn't a surprise baby).  Adalyn was 8 months old and we were thrilled to be giving her a baby sibling.  I was/am due on December 24th (in case any of you missed that news).

Rock Bottom:
Finally we have reached the turning point in the story.  I think everyone who wants to lose weight reaches this point at some time or another that they just can't stand how they feel anymore and are actually ready to do something about it.  I reached this point this past June.  I was 12ish weeks pregnant with baby #2 (don't you love how well I remember the details...not).  I was pretty depressed with how I felt, looked, and fit into my clothes.  I was also disappointed in myself that I hadn't lost the baby weight from Adalyn and now I was pregnant again.  Was I just going to gain more and more weight?  I had visions of what I would look like when I had my 4th or 5th child and I was physically ill inside.  I thought there was NO way out of the cycle.  I remember going to McKay's sisters wedding around this time.  I felt so blotted, nauseous (morning sickness), and depressed inside that day.  Here I am at the wedding in my first trimester. 

I poured my heart out to McKay later that weekend about how I was feeling.  He was a great listener and supporter.  P.S. I just want to clarify that these feelings not being pretty enough or skinny enough never ever once came from McKay.  He has always treated me perfectly and made me feel like a queen every single day... Just thought that I would throw that in. :) Love that man. 

Finally I decided something must be done.  Just because I was pregnant didn't mean I had to keep my same habits.  No I couldn't do anything too extreme like starve myself or exercise a million hours a day, but I could do something.  I prayed to my Heavenly Father (yes he cares about small things like this), started researching health, and thought about what my long term goals were.  Slowly over the course of that month I found the answers that I needed to get started toward the healthier me.  As I thought about what I really wanted; I decided that I didn't need to be super skinny (nor was that going to be a reality at this stage in my life) my ultimate goal at this stage in my life was to maintain a healthy weight.  I wanted to be able to play with my kids and stay active at all times (before, during, and after pregnancies)  Slowly I got started on my new fitness and food goals.  I actually didn't expect that anything would "feel" different while I was pregnant (I just thought that I would form good habits to help lose the weight after the baby was born), but I have had some surprising results.  Next up... The details on what I am doing fitness wise these days. 

Click here to read part 2
Click here to read part 3
Click here to read my final post

Hope you are all having a great day!