Before I say anything else, let me apologize for the length of time since my last post. Summer has been crazy! Working 40 hours, working out, side projects and a social schedule have been making a blog post impossible. I hope you'll forgive me. :) (And for those of you who didn't notice I was "gone" just ignore this paragraph)
I can't believe how different things are, even since the last time I wrote! First of all, I'm now at 194.4 pounds! My size 16 jeans are barely staying on me, (I actually can take them off without unbuttoning! That was a fun discovery) and I broke out some of my old smaller summer clothes with delight. I found a few things that I'm beyond stoked to get into to, but don't quite fit yet. Including a pair of size 12 ripped jeans that I never officially got to wear. I bought them on sale (well, my mom did actually) a few years ago, thinking that I'd use them for motivation to lose a few pounds. Sadly, I never got small enough to get into them back then, but now it really is a great motivation to me. I have brand new ripped jeans waiting for me! I told my mom I was tempted to pin them up on the wall in my bedroom just to give me a little kick in the rear. :) (For those of you who don't know this about me, I LOVE ripped jeans. Don't care if they go in or out of style, if I've got a pair, I'll wear them.)
When I packed up my "skinny" clothes three years ago I had only a small amount of hope that I would ever see them again. Just enough hope not to bring them to consignment or donate them. Ever since then they've haunted me. When we moved into this apartment two years ago and I had to move the bin marked "Size 10 Clothes" I did so with more than a little disappointment. The bin mocked me. "You had your chance and now it's gone... you'll never see these clothes on your body ever again." Even though they poked fun at me, I still couldn't get rid of them. Somewhere deep inside of me I knew I'd never quit this fight. No matter if I lost ground or gained it, I would never stop trying.
It turns out God was doing something with my weight gain that I didn't see. He was strengthening my marriage, for one thing. He challenged my past beliefs and showed me that my weight had nothing to do with how much my husband loved me. Ben has told me I'm beautiful everyday, regardless of what the scale has said. He's chosen to make me his standard of beauty and by God's grace I've always been able to trust Ben when he tells me he thinks I'm gorgeous. I hear women talk about getting changed in the dark because of how insecure they feel about their bodies (and I'm not even talking about overweight women!) and I am amazed that I've rarely felt that way, even at 232 pounds. And while part of that is knowing that my worth is not tied to my weight, it's also because my husband has made it abundantly clear that he loves me and my body. I don't think Ben would tolerate me getting dressed in the dark! :)
Back to the here and now. The scale has not been my daily friend, so I've changed my weigh-in schedule to once a week. I've been nervous to change when I got on the scale mostly because I didn't trust myself. I know the scale is the ultimate accountability. I can't hide from it's reality. So if I weigh myself daily, there's no way for me to lie to myself and say "I'm sure I did fine yesterday. An extra bite of dessert won't be that big of a deal." I also won't fall into the trap of thinking "I don't weigh in until Saturday, so I'll eat this now and then work out really hard the rest of the week." However, there were some drawbacks to daily weigh-ins. The scale is not always truthful. For about a week there it told me that, regardless of how hard I was working, I had gained half a pound. Not exactly motivational. Pretty freakin' DEmotivational. So I decided, as many professionals suggest, to weigh in once a week.
I had my first encounter with "vacation time" and thankfully, I managed to come out alright. I planned ahead which meals I was allowed to "splurge" on, and did my best to stick to my guns the rest of the time. Everyday counts and matters right now, which definitely helped keep me on track. October 21st is going to be here a lot faster than I realize and I know how important it will be for me to feel comfortable in my own skin. I have to keep "future Leigh" in mind or she will HATE ME later.
One interesting thing I've realized in the last two weeks is that it's okay if I don't meet my 150 goal mark by that October date. Don't get me wrong, I want to be as close to that as I can be, but I think in my head I thought it was 150 pound Leigh or 230 pound Leigh. Happily, that's not the case! If I go on that cruise with 15 extra pounds on me, I'll still be comfortable in shorts and a tankini. I'll still want to take a million pictures of Ben and I. So if for some reason I can't reach that 150 pound mark in time, I'm at peace with that. There's a certain amount of freedom in knowing that it's not a requirement, just an ideal. And being 15 pounds shy of that ideal will not kill me or ruin our vacation.
On the surgery/new stomach front, things are going really well. The transition to eating regular foods has been seamless. I still find myself hungry after 2-3 hours, but I'm learning what foods cause that and trying to combat the hunger with prepared healthy snacks for in-between meals. So far, so good. The hunger pains don't awaken me in the middle of the night much anymore, and when they do they're rarely so bad that I have to eat something. Usually I'll just be uncomfortable for a few minutes before drifting back to sleep. I've realized that eating certain foods for dinner (high carb meals especially) will cause worse hunger pains later. For instance, a couple of nights I had a bowl of cereal for dinner. Healthy cereal, high in protein and without refined carbs for the most part, but still, cereal. Both those nights I found myself waking up in the middle of the night with hunger pains that were impossible to ignore. So I've steered clear of making that mistake again.
Otherwise my diet has been pretty "easy" to keep to. (I say "easy" in quotes because NO diet is actually easy. But I've never been able to maintain this kind of diet before. This is a manageable lifestyle, which is what every person needs in order to keep to it. So really "easy" means "possible".) I have about 1000-1200 calories a day and try to workout four or five times a week. I allow myself one "cheat" night a week, where Ben and I can go out and I don't meticulously count the calories on my plate. I still stay away from the general "no-no" foods such as bread and rice even on splurge nights, but that's not too terribly hard. I don't keep any of that stuff in the house, so usually it's simply not an option. The wonderful part of all this is that I'm full with a MUCH smaller plate of food. You know how there are two kinds of plates, the big ones and then the half-sized ones? Well I used to need a piled-high big plate to be full. Now all it takes is a reasonably piled half size one. And that's pretty stinkin' awesome.
So that's life for now! Thank you again for all the love, support, and prayer you all have given me in this time. I can't tell you what it means to me!
<3 Leigh
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