Baby steps, y'all

The journey of a thousand miles begins with single step. I guess....at least that's what they say. Whoever "they" are. (Technically, "they" would be Confucius in this case. It was him. He said it.)
My steps, it turns out, are little teeny tiny baby steps. But they are steps all the same.  So I suppose you could say my journey of a thousand miles has begun.
During my pregnancy with Zoe, I craved sweets like a heroin junkie. And now, sadly, I kinda am like a junkie. My body got used to receiving sweets and refined sugars really regularly, and now it literally craves them. I would say I eat mostly healthy, but I have had a serious challenge getting off the sugar train since Zoe was born. In this post, I pointed out how quickly I noticed my body craving garbage. It is truly astounding how fast our bodies become accustomed to and even dependent on the things we put in it, good or bad. Breaking those habits and addictions (if we are to call them what they are) is why it is so hard for us all to get healthy and lose those extra LBs. It's not just about creating new habits of eating the right things and getting more exercise. It's also about ending the bad habits. If you've ever quit smoking or kicked another kind of addiction, you know how hard that can be.
So anyway, my teeny tiny baby steps. Yesterday we went to our church small group. During our meetings there is always some sort of snack, usually a dessert, and coffee. I don't usually have coffee because then I will become this.

 

But yesterday had been really challenging, and I was really tired so I had a cup to make sure I didn't start snoring during our discussion. By this point in my day, I had managed to avoid anything sweet aside from fruits. So I was kind of faced with the dilemma of "have the coffee with the real sugar and stay awake" (I use agave nectar at home for my coffee) or "skip the extra sugar consumption but fight to stay awake for the next 2 hours". Obviously, I went for the coffee. Then we got upstairs and there was a bowl of amazingly delicious chocolate chip cookies on the table. Oh my. They looked delicious and I was REALLY hungry. So I caved and had one. BUT a week ago, I would have had two or three and beaten myself up about it afterwards, regardless of whatever stupid justification I gave myself for "deserving" them, or how everyone else had more than 3 cookies, or whatever. It may have taken a two hour long silent argument with myself, but in the end I fought the urge to keep going back for more. Baby steps y'all....baby steps.

On the road again

While playing on the computer yesterday, I ended up here, rereading all my previous posts. I realized that I started this blog exactly a year ago. And sadly, I have yet to achieve my goal of losing that last 32 pounds. What I have gained instead is far more valuable however. Since my last posting, I've become a stay at home mom and also had a daughter, Zoe. It has been a wonderful(ly), challenging year. My body however, would disagree with that statement.
Just as I was gaining some headway back on the path of weight loss, Jason and I found out we were expecting another baby. In many ways, it mirrored my pregnancy with Nicholas. When I got pregnant with Nick, I had just started a good routine of getting in shape and the news of my pregnancy immediately caused fears that I would be completely derailed. However, I got very lucky and managed to only gain very little weight, which I lost almost effortlessly due to breastfeeding (yay hormones!).
But then I went on to lose 75 pounds and literally changed my life. So when I got pregnant with Zoe, I was almost crippled with the fear that I would undo all the good I had done and find myself right back where I started. Even despite the knowledge that weight gain during pregnancy was inevitable, the more the scale tipped up, the more discouraged I became. All told, I gained about 30 pounds.
For a lot of various reasons, it has been indescribably difficult to get back in the saddle, so to speak. Not the least of which is that I'm now home alone with 2 small kids all day long. Time to myself, for anything at all, is an absolute luxury. And like most moms, I have really hard time asking for time for me. There's a June Cleaver part of my brain that reasons that Jason has been working hard all day, he should be able to come home and just relax. Not come home and deal with the kids while I go out for something as selfish as a run. And I know he doesn't mind, I know he supports me, and I know that it's important for me to have that time. But my brain defaults to not making it a priority. So there's that.
Anyway...all that to just say I'm on the road again. After a year that included a complicated pregnancy fraught with bed rest and sugary cravings, I've landed about 10 pounds higher than I was before. So I'm starting over at 195. My body is shaped completely differently after this last pregnancy. I feel like a complete pear, all the weight from everywhere on my body seems to have settled squarely (or roundly, as the case may be) around my hips and butt. Super. This should be easy enough. (insert sarcasm here) I am in that terrible post-pregnancy phase where all my pre-pregnancy clothes are too small, and my maternity clothes (that could pass for regular clothes) are too big. Not one item of clothing I own fits as it should. And since I've yet to be selected for What Not to Wear and been given that treasured $5,000 gift card for a new wardrobe, I'm going to have to do something to change my size because I simply can't live my life in yoga pants and T-shirts. Comfy yes, flattering not so much.
For now, I don't have a strict plan laid out. The last few months have taught me that life is nothing if not unpredictable. For now, I'm just going to plan to take time for me at least once a day. If that means going for a run after Jason gets home, great. If the day only allows me to do some at-home work-out during some down time, great too. But it has to be a priority. Like before, I'm hoping that by maintaining this blog will hold me more accountable. But after rereading the posts from last year, I realized that the accountability isn't just to the readers. It's also to myself. Having those posts to look back on, and see how motivated I was helped me feel motivated again.
So, here we go. Again.