Turning a VERY Heavy Page

Hey friends!

This week was a major turning point for me and I feel like getting my headspace back where it needed to be has been a major undertaking in and of itself.  Forget actually making change, I've come to realize I need to be focused enough, AND ready enough for the "want to" to turn into "doing."  Let me bring you up to speed.

When I posted last October I was getting ready to open my LuLaRoe business and begin that journey. Wyatt was 6 months old, still nursing exclusively and life was generally going ok!

My female cycles came back at 8 months post partum...how unfair.  Can I get an amen?  A great number of women experience two things during exclusively nursing their babies.  They have no period until they stop nursing, and they lose weight while breastfeeding.  Guess what? NEITHER of those things applied to me.

So, what?

Well, I have battled this issue called Postpartum Depression and anxiety pretty badly since Wyatt arrived with us.  I struggled a great deal but had found a decent place around the last time I wrote here.  Then, Aunt Flo came back for an uninvited visit, and the hormone shift threw me backwards in my forward progress in many ways.  Queue terrible mood swings, awful food cravings, and feeling just horrible about how I looked.  Even with my gorgeous clothes, I was struggling.

I was crazy busy getting my business off the ground and just buried myself in it.  This was healthy in some ways, and unhealthy in others.  It has made me very successful in a short amount of time, and the distraction has been good.  On the flip side, it has definitely made me busier, and having time to food prep and exercise has been laughable.

The holidays were TOUGH on me.  I was down, depressed, feeling fat and gross, and exhausted.  Felt like I wasn't going to find my way out of the funk.  We rounded the first of the year and while it hasn't been perfect, I've been trying my hardest to find my way out of the pit I seemed to have climbed into. I can't even say fallen, because I made SO many poor conscious choices that it only seems fair to truly admit that I put myself there.  Even in a low headspace, I know better.  And still.  I did not do better.

Now we are about to begin May.  I've missed all the gorgeous outside weather and it's beginning to get muggy and hot.  I finally saw my doctor last month and we talked through the issues and I'm working on rebalancing my hormones some.  We will see if that helps.

In the meantime, last week I finally decided enough was enough.  On the tail end of being sick AGAIN (the second time this year) I got a massive migraine.  That's it, I told myself. IT.  Wyatt is weaned for the most part.  He's doing fantastically, growing, developing, and eating well.  He's paleo, by the way, with the exception of his birthday cake which he hated.

So Monday I began a Whole 30.  Because Monday is when everything starts over.  And Mondays are already generally pretty terrible, so why not begin a challenging eating plan then?

I took my "before" pictures on Tuesday.  I weighed in.  I still need to do measurements and will try to get those done tomorrow.

I laid awake most nights this week in bed pondering my before pictures.  It's not like I hadn't realized that I had gained the weight back, ALL of it.  It's not like I had pictured myself skinny and so it was shocking.  It's not like I didn't realize when I tried to sit in chairs at restaurants or walk through smaller spaces that it felt different.

But snapping those pictures.  Then looking at them.  And really FACING myself.  That was tough.  The internal struggle of wanting to give up before I even began again started plaguing my late night thoughts.  How did I let this happen?  Why haven't I gotten ahold of it yet? How am I going to fit cooking and eating whole foods back into my non negotiables of my schedule?  How how HOW?

That's when I realized I was spending WAY too much time looking backwards.  While it's great to re-read my blogs from the past, see how I did things before, what made me successful, and basking in the glory days, I have to look AHEAD.

This time I am older, my life is busier, I have two children instead of one, two jobs instead of one, and what feels like a massive pile of weight to lose.  What I do have going for me deep down in the folds of my memory is tons of recipes, shortcuts to eating well especially while traveling, and the DESIRE to find my way forward.

Notice I didn't say find my way "back."

Because I don't want to be who I was before I had my sweet rainbow baby and my super fun, successful side business.

I want to be healthy with my life now.  And that might take longer, be tougher, and look different.

So, much like when I began this blog in 2010, I'm here, just a girl sitting in her plus size shift dress, 6 days into her 10th Whole 30, setting myself goals for May 2017.

Here's what they look like:

- Complete the Whole 30 successfully, and extend if feeling like I need more time
- Begin walking at least 4 days/week
- Take some "me" time, be it a massage, pedicure or girls day out.  Something small each week.
- Don't overschedule myself.  Have at least ONE day a week I nap or sleep in (or both).
- Plan my food weekly and stick to the plan.  Meal prep before traveling.
- Write in my blog at least 2 times in May.
- ENJOY my life and live it, not let it pass me by.

Of course my business goals are a little more specific but wanted to keep my personal goals more high level and attainable.  Once I crush those they will get a little more intense the more I see success.  Baby steps.

Over the last year I have tried reading the end of the book a few times, looking for it all to just fall back into place for me, and really only accomplished my goal of nursing my son for a year.  It's not been a bust, my friends.  THAT goal was super important to me and I'm really proud of how hard it was to make that happen with how much I had going on.

But the page, my friends, has officially been turned.

Game on.

Hugs & Love,
Clara