My body and Me

When I first started this blog a year ago, I wrote about my struggle to get healthier and make a lifestyle change. Since then, I have struggled to change my thinking from 'sugar=yummy' to 'sugar=bad', learned to curb my emotional eating habits, dealt with my husband's crazy diets (remember the 'milk diet'?), lost 18 pounds, and discovered I had a jawbone hiding beneath my double chin. Okay, maybe the double chin wasn't that big but the very fact that I can crack a joke or two about my weight proves that my weight isn't as sensitive an issue as it used to be. Throughout the last year, I've learned to love my body for what it is-strong, curvaceous, nurturing-instead of what I thought others would see it as-lumpy, bulgy, and too big. I am proud to have lost weight before getting pregnant and even prouder that my weight gain has been relatively minimal since. My goals were to lose weight and learn to live healthier and I've done that. (It's still a shocker to me when I go grocery shopping and the first thing I do is read the ingredients label. If there is corn syrup or sugar in it at all, I usually put it back.) We eat more fresh produce now than we used to, our meat is all from local producers that we know, and I don't bake goodies. I still miss the sugary sweets once in a while but I feel so sick and achey and tired if I eat too much sugar that it's not hard to avoid sweets. My problem is I miss what I remember it tasting like. I know I have a long struggle ahead of me yet. I have to get through the final four months of my pregnancy while keeping my weight gain down. Then I have to lose the lingering 'baby weight' before I can even think about losing any more! Then, I need to be committed to keeping the weight off! However, I am hopeful that I can do this. I managed to make it through the last year of lifestyle changes. Perhaps I can make it through another year. (I also want to prove my doctor wrong. She said it would be preferable that I keep my weight gain down during this pregnancy but I probably wouldn't be able to do it. We'll see.)