Hi,
I'm Emily, mother of an awwesome 3 year old, runner, Foodie, yoga lover, Clean Eating enthusiast, and 100 pound weight loss success story. I'm not going to tell you that the weight came off overnight, nor will I say it has been an easy journey, but I will tell you that making the decision to get and stay healthy is totally worth it!
I was chubby throughout most of my childhood and early adult life. I didn't have solid nutrition knowledge growing up, so when I found myself at 252 pounds when I was 22 years old, with a pre-diabetic diagnosis, and a doctor wanting to prescribe prescription drugs for insulin resistance, I decided to teach myself about health and nutrition, and lose weight. Diabetes does run on both sides of my family, but I refuse to take medication for a disease that can be avoided by making healthier choices every day. Over the next few years, I worked out regularly, learned to cook everything from scratch, and educated myself about the negative health effects of processed foods. I lost 80 pounds and kept it off for a couple of years.
Life always throws curve balls at us; what can I say? When I was 27, I had been working in a very high stress environment, and I wasn't exactly happy at work, so I let myself relax a little too much with the nutrition. I justified my stress eating as ok, because I was eating things like Ben & Jerry's ice cream, fresh, local cheeses, and whole wheat, minimally processed complex carbohydrates. While those were somewhat healthier options, too many calories and extras equals weight gain. I clearly didn't have the nutrition part of the equation 100% figured out yet, even though I had come miles from where I started. 30 pounds crept back on within a 6 month period, and then I got pregnant. My ex-husband and I had decided it was time to have a child after we had been married for 8 years. Over the course of my pregnancy, I wasn't counting calories, or on a diet, and I didn't exactly hold myself accountable for what I was eating. I was eating healthy foods most of the time, but I also let myself indulge in burgers and ice cream as often as the mood struck. I gained 50 pounds during my pregnancy.
So, it's 2013, after my son was born, and I was right back at 250 pounds! Life stayed hectic for the next couple of years, and my ex-husband was never really supportive of my health goals. It was always a struggle to get him to exercise to take better care of himself. I had learned at that point to stop nagging him, and when he ruined my healthy dinner plans with take-out and pizza nights instead, I didn't have it in me to argue over food, especially not while being a busy new mom. We moved across the country 2 months after our son was born to be near our families again, my ex-husband had a hard time adjusting to the financial stress of having a child, moving, and adjusting to living on less while we navigated decisions on when it would make more financial sense for me to get back to working full-time. He also hated his new job. He started to withdraw from everyone, even me. I tried getting him to talk to me, but he resented me for asking him for the one thing I needed during our marriage: to be near family again to raise our son. I had always supported him through college, I moved across the country with him so he could get a degree, I worked full-time to help support us, I made it possible for us to survive and thrive completely on our own in our twenties, 1700 miles away from family. I was always the giver. As long as he didn't have to compromise, he was happy, we were "happy". None of this occured to me until he got depressed after we moved back home. The one time I stood my ground and asked him to turn around and support me, he cracked under pressure and resented me for "ruining the life he built for us." I tried to convince him to talk to a professional, or go to therapy together when he completely shut me out, and he refused. He decided that prescription medication was the best route to take to "fix" him. That approach was more of a last resort method in my mind, as I grew up watching my father over-medicate himself for ailments I'm not even sure he had. In early 2015, the bubble finally burst, and my ex-husband admitted that he had given up; given up on putting any effort into working through things with me, because he was still resentful of me for making him compromise once in over 10 years of marriage. He actually admitted that he would always put his job first over family. If they asked him to work late or travel often, he was hell bent on getting back to "where he thought he should have been in his career by then." There was no coming back from that. Marriage takes 100% effort from both spouses, 100% of the time.
During the course of 2015, while we navigated the divorce process, I began to just do me. I was still learning to juggle my responsibilities as a mom, and working full-time, but it was time to prioritize me for the sake of my health and sanity. Taking care of one's self makes you a better parent, for sure. My son challenges me to be my best me in more aspects of life than health. I never stop pushing myself to learn more about nutrition and health. My son will grow up with a great example of how to be independant and take good care of himself, at least from me.
Now I can happily say I've maintained my 152 pounds for almost a year. I really began to experiment with foods to see what foods didn't agree with me over the last year. I learned that dairy is not my friend. Too much, and I get bloated, inflammation, and I gain weight. The same holds true for wheat and sugar. Eliminating these foods from my diet, and then reintroducing them after several months helped me realize that those are the foods that negatively affect my health when I consume too much of them. I've made it my priority to learn about how different foods affect our bodies, our health, and I've learned what works for me.
The journey to our best health is never over. I still have goals to work on fine tuning my fitness and to build long, lean muscles. I would like to lose a few more pounds, but my body and I are happy here. It's all about staying present and mindful in our lives. Practicing yoga has taught me to take life one day at a time. I am at peace with myself and I know that I have the power to make the right choices for my health, even through the storms. I am absolutely positive that I will never let myself gain more than a couple of pounds without checking in with myself to refocus on the bigger picture of maintaining my best health. The journey is never over, and that is a beautiful thing!