What Happens After "Before and After"

Before, 230 pounds

After, 155 pounds

My weight went up by about 5 pounds recently. This puts me at 175. Which is 25 pounds away from my dream goal and about 15 pounds away from a healthy BMI.

I have some excuses or "reasons" for why I put on the weight... I was sick for nearly 3 weeks, which put exercise off the table, while also making my regular dieting ways difficult. My grandmother passed away and my family was going through some stressful changes, and stress makes my body hold on to weight even more than usual. On top of that, I had some tests done and found out that certain hormonal levels are dangerously low, which will cause weight gain. I also have some unreasonable excuses... mainly little compromises that build on each other. But nothing I can't make a turnaround on with a little help... I hope. None of this equals a hopeless situation.

But here's what I hear in that paragraph above: blah, blah, blah. Excuses, excuses, excuses. And the girl who always feels defeated inside me grabs the mic and starts in on me. "This is what happened last time you put all your weight back on. Little by little. You thought things would be different, but clearly you're destined to be fat. Look at yourself even now! Your pants are too tight and you've got a gut!" She doesn't end there, but for your sake, I'll end there.

In addition to defeated girl, that old vanity monster still lives inside my head (although I've shot the thing a lot... somehow it grows back if you don't watch it carefully) and it is PISSED. It starts telling me that extreme measures are now absolutely necessary. Things like just not eating become tempting. I just want the weight off NOW. Screw the whole "healthy" path.

Needless to say, there's a lot of feelings of guilt, shame and discouragement flying around right now. I'm feeling desperate. I just want some control with this and I am tempted to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

And suddenly, the warning alarm starts going off.

One guess who I'm not asking for help or guidance from. That's right... God. I've done what I usually do all over again: started out with all the right motives and tools and then slowly edged God out of the equation all together because for some reason I think I've got it handled now. Which reminds me of a bipolar person who goes off their meds because they're feeling better. A.k.a. it's INSANITY. You don't walk away from the thing that keeps you healthy because you are now healthy! You cling even more desperately to it because it's shown itself to be effective! What is with us always thinking it'd be better if we were in control of our lives instead of leaning on God in complete trust?

Satan wants to lie to me and tell me there's a faster way. An easier way. A shortcut. And it's total crap. The ONLY way out of this for me is by surrendering each day, each meal, each bite over to the Lord. And then also asking for help and motivation to move and strengthen my body. Now there are practical things involved with this. There are habits and accountability that need to be in place. There's also some hormonal imbalances that are getting worked out. But ultimately, this is me surrendering my desire for thinness over to God. Again. Because as much as I'd love to take a shortcut and look good in pictures at my sister-in-law's wedding in 3 weeks, if that shortcut costs me in the long run, it's not worth it. I don't want to compromise what I know is right for a "right now" feelings boost.

My accountability partner/nutrition adviser gave me some great advice a couple weeks ago when I called crying in frustration. She asked me to write down all the things that are good right now. All the things that make this time different than last time. Here's my list:

Things that I'm thankful for/where I've made progress/still to be done:

• I'm eating healthy foods, not letting unhealthy food choices rule
• We're working on getting my hormones regulated
• I'm going to order vitamin D to help with the depression and weight stuff
• Sally thinks my blood work is good!
• I'm making changes that will benefit me for the rest of my life, not just make my weight go down right now 
• My energy levels are increasing and working out is possible again (weights make my body really happy!)
• Ben thinks I'm beautiful no matter what weight I am and wants me to be healthy more than he wants me to be thin
• This is not the same as the last time I was at this weight. I'm not making excuses to eat crappy, food is not in control, I have accountability and support.
• I have Katie and Sally on my team! They're here to help me figure things out! :)

All of that reminded me that I'm not stuck. There's no need for me to become desperate. There's no need for me to take a deadly shortcut, because I'm still on the right path, even if the scale isn't my friend right now. Don't get me wrong, I still want to take the shortcut, but that desire is greatly diminished by the fact that I know it's not worth it (and not necessary!).

So here's me preaching to myself (maybe a few of you out there can say something similar to yourselves)...

Leigh, you were once a girl who was out of control. You ate horrible foods and made a lot of excuses. You binge-dieted and then binge-ate. All of that lead to uncontrolled weight gain and a pants size of 22. BUT YOU ARE NOT THAT GIRL ANYMORE. You are a size 12! The size of those ripped jeans you hung on your door and dreamed of wearing! You looked at those jeans and thought they were tiny. That's what size you are RIGHT NOW. So stop freaking out about right now's appearance and start working on what needs to be tweaked. The key word is TWEAKED. An overhaul is not necessary and that differentiation is EVERYTHING. Take a deep breath, lean hard into the Lord, and keep moving forward.

*takes a deep breath*

Okay. Here we go. Again. Or still.

Also, here's what I look like now. It's clearly nothing to freak out over. And like I said, the 230 pound version of myself would KILL to look like I look right now. So thank You Jesus, for bringing me this far and for being trustworthy to finish the good work You started in me.

After after, 175 pounds

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6

New Year, Old Me

A few days ago something completely normal happened... the clock struck twelve. Yet for most of us, it did so with extreme significance. Many of us looked back at 2015 and did a mental catalog of all that's happened, both good and bad. And if you're like me, you looked at a little list you'd made a year prior and did a quick "did I measure up?"

I don't know if I've gone a year yet without making a list of New Year's Resolutions that didn't have at least one pertaining to weight loss. Last year was no different. I wrote down "Get down to 150 or a healthy weight." You know how much weight I lost in 2015? Zero. I didn't lose any weight in 2015. To be completely honest, it took me a second to shake off my disappointment in myself (old habits die hard). But after thinking about it for a moment, I quickly realized how foolish my disappointment was.

I didn't lose weight last year, but I most definitely did find my healthy place (which is usually strongly correlated with my happy place) with my weight. If you've read my last two blog posts, you know God has done a lot to change my heart regarding how I view food and how I view beauty (to sum up, I'm addicted to food and I often equate my value with how beautiful others think I am). God's helping me work on both these issues and 2015 saw me freed from a lot of chains. But one of His biggest gifts came to me on Christmas morning (well timed, God).

I honestly don't know how it came about, but Ben and I were talking about weight-loss for whatever reason and something suddenly became abundantly clear. Having an extra 15 pounds on my body is a huge benefit to me. Let me explain...

 For those of you who know me, my greatest desire in life is to be some kind of a counselor. I crave serving others in their dark emotional moments, helping to bring comfort and hope. What that looks like exactly in the future is still up for debate, but one thing has been essential in my ability to counsel others. People need to trust me. A couple of friends at our small group once called me disarming and I called Katie and told her that I'd finally found a compliment that I'd rather get more than "you're beautiful". Being disarming means others find me more easy to trust. And if they trust me, the better the odds they'll share the hard stuff in life with me. So what does all that have to do with my weight loss?

Confession: I immediately distrust and/or despise hot girls (blonde ones most of all, for some odd reason). What I mean by "hot girls" in this case are those who look like they have their beauty all put together. They're "perfect" in their bodies, their hair, their clothes, their makeup, etc. It's ironic that I hate them because I also have spent most of my life trying to be one of them. Although this isn't too ironic, because jealousy and hate go hand-in-hand. All that being said, God hit me upside the head on Christmas morning with this truth: if being "perfect" outwardly (and we all know perfect is used loosely here, because it's a completely unattainable thing... I'll always want a few more pounds lost, or blonde hair, or the loose skin on my legs and stomach to go away, etc.) makes me less approachable, disarming, and/or trustworthy, then I don't want it. I actually, truly don't.

Why in the world am I chasing something that not only is unattainable (there will always be someone prettier than me, as we previously talked about), but can also have the capacity to make me less capable of doing the thing I love most in this life?

This hit my heart like a ton of bricks. And I cried (no shock to anyone). Side note: what was kind of hilarious about this scene is all of this happened in the middle of a conversation with Ben, but the logic and truth was getting worked out completely inwardly. So when the truth hit and I started crying happy tears, Ben had no idea what was going on. Poor guy. Anyhooo... I felt free. Once upon a time, a couple of decades ago, God helped me see how my extra weight had been a protection for me (long story, I'll write it out a different time). On Christmas morning, He showed me how a little extra weight was not a liability/burden at all... it was an asset. 

I'm very glad the Leigh on New Year's Eve last year added "... or a healthy weight" to my 150 pound resolution. Because now I look at that resolution and know that God helped me attain it. God helped me in 2015 to become more healthy in body (cutting out sugar and working on making my body healthy, not thin), mind (I actually don't want to be thin! HURRAY!!!) and soul (food is a sin issue for me and I don't want it to rule in my heart). 

For the first time ever, I think I'll leave off a weight loss goal on my list of 2016 resolutions. I might have some semi-related goals (getting my back strong and healthy comes to mind), but I think I'll leave off the rest. More than anything, this is what I want:

"But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13b-14

Happy New Year, all.