Be warned...I'm rambling. Time for a little heart to heart about my fitness goals. My goals should not be tied to the number on a scale but I have to say it is. I don't feel comfortable in this body of mine. I feel strong. I feel healthy. I don't feel comfortable. Maybe that's a failure of society or maybe that's just my personal failure but it is what it is. So this post will talk a lot about weight. Its not the most important thing for sure. For me right now though I just don' believe that this weight is the healthiest weight for my bod. I don't believe that my slow running is the fastest I can do. If I were talking to someone else. A close friend for instance I would say, "but how do you feel? You're healthy and you eat healthy and you exercise so who cares what the number on the scale says?" The answer? I care. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do.
Obviously, for the last few years, really my whole life, I have been focused on eating healthy. Well, not my whole life, but recently in the last 20 years, eating healthy and exercising. That's always been really important to me. I have tried lots of different ways to exercise. Right now, obviously I run, I spend a lot of my time doing workouts at home, finding out what works for my body. I do shake it up, or I tend to shake it up from time to time. I've also focused on figuring out the best way to fuel my body, and it changes. It certainly evolves and has evolved over the years.
Now, that's all well and good, but unfortunately last year and the year before, I was not reaching those numbers. I was not hitting my goals. I was not hitting my goals running. I was doing the work, I was putting in the effort. I was eating healthy, and I wasn't seeing movement on the scale. Now, obviously I should spend more time taking before and after photos. I should spend more time focused on measuring tapes and how my clothing fit, but the fact is that I do need to see a significant reduction on the scale has been upsetting and demoralizing. Your number on the scale is just a number, of course.
But here's the thing. I'm carrying this extra weight and I have not seen any others issues. It hasn't affected my blood pressure. It hasn't affected my glucose levels. It hasn't affected my cholesterol. I have seen no other issues, but I don't know how long I can sort of keep that up or how long that will last. The only number to focus on is the number on the scale. Now, what has happened was, last year I was still setting goals to eat healthy, but I was really sort of exploring these different ways of eating. I wasn't doing strict calorie counting, which is good, but I also saw nothing happen with any weight loss. Once again, this is my thing. Right? This is not me encouraging you to lose a ton of weight. This is all me, but I am sharing it because I want you to know where I'm coming from and you to know what I'm thinking.
This year, obviously, my goals are the same as they were last year. One big difference this year to last year is that this year I've stopped nursing. Which is scary because I've always said that when I stopped nursing but hormones will even out and my body will get back to its new normal. (I have no expectation or desire for my body to get back to its 29 year old self.)
Over the years I haven't been overly kind to my body. I have not given myself enough calories. I lost a lot of weight after the first baby. I kept to a low caloric intake after the first baby and then I got pregnant with the second baby. I really wasn't treating myself as well as I should have been treating myself when it came to calorie intake. Between that and hormones I've always hoped with some time to just be it self that my body will sort itself out.
I wanted to put this out there because, of course, my fear is that I've stopped nursing, which is what I always said I needed to do to lose weight, and I'm still not going to lose weight. I'm going to have to come to terms at some point this year with thought that this is my body and I love it and it has given me three beautiful babies, but this might be it. This might be the new me, and I don't know that it is, and that doesn't mean that I'm not going to eat incredibly healthy for the rest of my life because it's important to me. It doesn't mean that I'm going to stop exercising because the fact is that I exercise for way more reasons than weight. None of those things are going to change, but it is possible that this is my body and it has nothing to do with nursing.
Basically, I'm looking for support in case this does in fact happen. Right? Then I'm sort of left saying, "Okay, well, that excuse is gone. What do we do now?" I'm just looking to know that you'll be there and you'll be encouraging me so that, if my theory that I haven't lost weight because of hormone issues is wrong, you'll still have my back.
Anyway, that's my story. I'm excited to hear what your fitness and health goals are for the year. Maybe your blood pressure is higher than you want, or your glucose levels are off, or maybe you feel like you've been fighting an addiction to sugar for a long time and you just are done with it and you don't know what to do. I'm excited to hear what you're doing, and I'm looking forward to us supporting each other over the next 11 months, because yes, it's already February and we missed the first month of the year.