Welcome to my new little corner of the web! This is where I will document my journey to lose weight, hold myself accountable, ramble and rant, and hopefully make a few new friends.
I thought I was going to have a terrible time coming up with an anonymous name for my blog. I haven’t even told my husband about this – which is awful, I don’t usually keep secrets from him, not life changing ones anyway. Sunshine is part of a nickname from way back, long ago enough that I can think of only one person that would remember. And proverbs, well I’ve been reading a lot of them lately. And psalms but I like the word proverbs better.
Some upfront warnings:
Even though I was, at one time, working towards becoming an English teacher, my internet grammar is not awesome. I tend to type how I speak and I use punctuation to fill in for hand gestures or funny faces. It’s how I roll. I use way too many exclamation points!!!!!!!! And I really overuse the words totally and awesome. I’ll apologize for it all in advance but now that you’ve been warned you’re not allowed to complain about it 🙂
Usually I hate when people feel the need to label themselves or announce their faith upfront but since I’m certain my faith will spill out onto these pages often, I feel like I should talk about it immediately. I am Christian, a member of the UCC, and very active in my church. My faith has brought me through a lot in my life. God has blessed me in more ways than I could ever express on a computer screen. I’m very much praying for His guidance on this journey.
On with it!
I am a 32 year old stay-at-home-mom with three children, P (boy, 4yrs), BG (girl, 3 yrs), and E (boy, 1 yr). My most excellent husband is K. He has battled his weight his entire life and I am hoping to be a gentle encouragement to him without announcing that we’re going on a DIE-T.
I’ve been struggling with my weight my entire adulthood. I was 20 when I started gaining and by the time I was 25 I was over 270. I’ve been up and down, pregnant three times in 3 years, then down and up again. I don’t know what my current weight is – we’ll all find out together tomorrow (the scale is somewhere in the garage and my husband isn’t home to watch the little one while I go a-searching). I will take pictures on Wednesday (when my husband will be working and 2 kids will be at preschool so I’ll have some privacy).
I have PCOS and at one time I was able to blame much of my weight on it. Not anymore. I know that my current struggle is mostly due to my poor habits. My absolute love of fast food and diet soda. This holiday season was a trial for me in a way that I’m not used to, but I’ll make a separate post about that.
My chosen lifestyle is low glycemic / South Beach. I know it works for me, I know I feel fantastic and healthy when I stick with it. It’s easy for me to follow and I don’t have to try to count calories or weigh food while simultaneously changing a diaper, building a lego tower, and folding the laundry 🙂 More importantly, it’s healthy and recommended for women with PCOS. It’s very difficult for me to get to the gym with all three kids at times when child care is offered so I’ve decided to work out at home. To start I’m aiming for 4 times a week, a minimum of 30 minutes a time.
I’ve had a million a-ha moments over the years. In just the past 6 months I’ve had enough serious nudges – declined life insurance b/c of my weight and I even fudged it! I was having chest pains/discomfort for a few days, pain in my knee which thankfully healed, and I’ve started struggling with the stairs in my house even though I go up and down them 10 times a day. Even my baggy fat jeans are starting to fit. Shouldn’t I be willing to do ANYTHING to get healthier so I can be around for my family? Shouldn’t I be a better example for my kids? Shouldn’t I do as I say? I would NEVER allow my kids to eat the crap I’ve been shoving in my mouth the past few months. Seems like it should be a DUH moment, not an a-ha one! But somehow none of that was enough.
So what’s different this time around? I read a quote on a blog, that seems to be abandoned so I won’t link to it, about how another mother found motivation not because she was doing it for her, but because she was doing it for everyone else. That really speaks to me. This body is on loan to me while I’m on this planet. It belongs to God, it belongs to my husband, it belongs to my children. If I want to honor the commitments I’ve made here I need my body to healthy.
I’m making better choices immediately but I’ll officially start with South Beach Phase 1 on Monday – New Year’s Day. That’s truly a coincidence. I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions. But the weather is terrible so I can’t go shopping right away and I have some good, healthy things in the house that I need to use up before Phase 1 (whole grain breads, apples, bananas, etc). I’ve got my first 10 days of meals written out and I’ve got some chicken poaching away in the crockpot. I’m all set! I hope you’ll stick around to see what happens!
Sunshine and Proverbs 