the one about the gym

K and I recently got gym memberships and I've been going fairly often. I have significant weight loss goals that I hope to make a large dent in by the time my birthday rolls around again next year, but realistically won't be completely done by then. The time is going to go by and I figure at least I've started. It's been about six weeks and I'm about 19 pounds down. The child care at the gym will only take A for an hour, which was kind of initially disappointing. But only having an hour is probably why I've been able to be so consistent. I do cardio for at least 35 minutes and then most of the time lift weights for a little bit too. It's kind of discouraging to be able to see better muscle definition but still have so much weight to lose, but if I keep at it, it'll get better.

I feel better. I feel stronger and somehow leaner even though my workout pants from the days of yore are just now starting to fit decently. I feel somewhat accomplished in getting the boys out of the house and being able to wrangle both of them back into the car after working out. It's getting easier to do cardio and it's not scary to bump up the time a little bit and go longer.

Although I've wanted to lose weight for awhile, I've still basically felt okay about myself. I love my hair and how blue my eyes are. And I don't have a lot of clothes, but what I have is good enough for now at least. After I gave birth to S and had gone through that entire high risk pregnancy and emergency c-section and breast-feeding struggle and had this gorgeous baby to show for all of it, I stopped worrying about what my thighs looked like in my swim suit. My husband thinks I'm beautiful and I just let myself believe it when he says it or that he really means it when he grabs my butt as I walk by. I want to be healthier and active alongside my sons and be able to show them by example how to be strong and have goals and reach them. 


I'm getting there. When I met with a personal trainer at the gym, he said that working out is really only 20% of it and what you eat and drink is 80%. I'm working on making better food choices. I think starting school will really help because I'll need to pack stuff to eat five days a week. When I'm at home all day with the boys and running around the house or whatever, I end up just grabbing things to eat and not making the best choices all of the time because I just realized I'm STARVING and need something to eat immediately. I've stopped buying some things and tried to make healthy things easy to grab from the fridge. I'm okay with it going slowly because I know if I drop Dr. Pepper and everything fried and chocolate all at once, I won't be able to stick with it. But if I go slowly and add in more veggies and replace Dr. Pepper with iced tea and still hang on to chocolate, I'll be able to keep on keeping on.

So here's to being able to buy really cute clothes in a year! And really truly keep up with my two little boys. Because really. They are already so freaking active!