Challenges

It has taken me about two months to get the courage to post this and I am still shaking a little as I write this but I think it will be really good for me to have it written down. I have always struggled with my self image and I have never felt like I was the prettiest or I would always find some flaw about myself. I guess it is one of my biggest challenges and I have decided it is time to make a change. I know there are probably many other women who face some of the same challenges in their lives so I am hoping sharing some of my story can maybe help someone else with their own. I am going to be writing about how I really feel. It will not be sugar coated just a warning.

I don't know why I was always so hard on myself, because really as I look back now I have always been pretty small and skinny but for some reason I always wanted to be skinnier. I never did anything that would harm myself to try to make myself skinnier but I always wished that I could look a certain way. I knew that I wasn't obese but I always thought my stomach was a little fat and my butt was too big and my hips were too wide, etc , etc.

I saw a quote on pintrest the other day that read something along the lines of " I wish I was as fat as when I first thought I was fat" and that is kind of true right now. With this negative self image it was really hard on me being pregnant. I knew that I was gaining weight and getting bigger because I was growing a baby inside of me but it was still so hard on me. I gained about 34 pounds while I was pregnant which is about average. I did yoga while I was pregnant and really watched what I ate because I knew that if I went crazy eating anything and everything in sight then the pounds would be a lot harder to loose once I had the baby.

After I had Bentley and he was in the NICU I didn't really have time to think about myself or my body. And honestly I didn't really feel like doing anything but wearing sweats for about the first four weeks postpartum and I didn't really have time to blink an eye about it because I was trying to take care of my newborn.

Then I finally needed to start wearing normal clothes again so I could go out and about and run some errands. Nothing fit. I couldn't get any of my pants up past my knees and none of my shirts fit because my boobs were so huge. I sat on the floor and cried for a while. I don't know why I thought I would automatically shrink back to my normal size after I had a baby, actually I do know. It is set up that way in our society. If you don't shrink right back down after having a baby you are looked down upon and you should feel bad about yourself. I just had a baby a month ago! Hello it took my body 9 months to get this way it is probably going to take longer than a month to go back. So i put on my maternity clothes and left the house.

After a while however, still wearing maternity clothes was making me feel worse and worse about myself. And I had stupidly decided that I wasn't going to buy any bigger clothes because it would be more motivation for me to get back down to my per-pregnancy size. Well, let me tell you something, that is probably the worst thing I could have done for myself and I am just now realizing it four months post-partum. By doing that it just made me feel worse and worse about myself each day that I couldn't fit back into those clothes. So eventually I broke down and bought a couple things because I couldn't spend another day in maternity clothes. Unfortunately we didn't have a whole lot of money to spend so that ended up being about 2 shirts 2 skirts and 1 pair of pants.  I probably would have gotten more but I got so frustrated at the store because nothing was fitting. I went up a size in everything and things were still fitting weird because some parts of me are still small while others aren't, so I was just at a super awkward size right. I literally had a huge breakdown in the parking lot of Ross.  Josh really believes in positive affirmations, so after my breakdown he told me I needed to just start saying "I like myself" and I am not going to lie I couldn't do it. I couldn't even fake it. I just bawled and bawled.

Unfortuantely you can't spend money when you don't have any to spend, and you can't make clothes fit you right, so I just try to keep my head up and make do with what I have and try not to look too long in the mirror. But why do I feel so ashamed about the way I look? After all I did just have a baby 4 months ago and it took my body 9 months to get this way.

My doctors said I could start working out again after 6 weeks postpartum. So I did but I am not going to lie it was rough! All your muscles are stretched out and everything is so much harder then before.  Then unfortunately working out started affecting my milk supply so I had to stop. ugh that was rough. I knew there was no way to keep losing the weight if I couldn't even work out but I knew it was what was best for Bentley. Then finally about a month ago I was able to start working out again which has made me feel a little better.

I was having a really hard time the last two weeks and it has got me pretty depressed that I still haven't seen much results. People keep saying to me that I look great but I know most of that is just people wanting to say something nice. My head keeps telling me otherwise. I finally got brave enough to weigh myself yesterday and I only have about 5 pounds to go before I am back at pre-pregnancy weight. That made me feel a lot better for a little while but then I looked in the mirror again and it seems like I still have about 20 to go.

After being continually hard on myself for so long a friend posted this story today and it is just what I needed. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joy-gabriel/kate-middleton-and-the-mom-in-the-mirror_b_3672553.html. I basically bawled like a baby while reading it because it is exactly how I am feeling and exactly what I needed to read.

It really is just a change in mindset, which is easier said than done trust me. It is so crazy what our bodies can do. It really is beautiful and a miracle but then once the baby is born it is ugly and looked down upon, what? Our society seriously needs a slap in the face and unfortunately I think the people who are always saying these things have never even gone through child birth....

I know this post is kind of all over the place but it is kind of how my thoughts are right now. I am not looking for sympathy for people to tell me what they think I want to hear. This is about me changing my way of thinking. No one else can do that but me. I still can't say that I like myself but I am working on it and I think that is the biggest thing. I am trying to make a change in my mindset. I want to feel beautiful and happy. I need to learn that feeling beautiful and being skinny do not stick together. I can feel beautiful exactly how I am right now I just have to choose to feel that way.

My first goal is to start feeling beautiful again no matter what I look like. Once I do that I think my fitness and health goals will feel a little more worth while.

Whew glad to have a little of that off my chest now on to a happier and healthier me. More of my story to come soon.