Back in the Saddle...Again

Wow...it has been far too long since my last blog post. I have determined that I need to start blogging again. No, I will never become a household name, and I will never be able to make blogging a career, but I need to do this for accountability. My good friend Adrienne, over at Chronicles of a Curvy Housewife, started a group on facebook for those of us trying to lose weight. We encourage each other, talk about our triumphs, our defeats, our struggles and just pretty much anything that suits our fancy. After several of my own personal posts (which seemed to go on forever and ever), I have decided that I needed to just start blogging again. With 4 girls that are 5 and under, and a husband that tends to be gone more than he's home, I find that there are days that I am "starved" for conversation. No one to truly talk to (adult conversation) and no one to encourage me in my ways. In fact, it's down right tempting not having someone here to keep me accountable. It's hard not to take on the attitude of "noone is here, they'll never know that I just ate an entire container of Lay's Stax potato chips" (ok, I might be confessing to this. I was sick yesterday and the only thing I could keep down were potato chips (I ran out of gluten free crackers), so it wasn't the entire container...but at least half of the tube). So needless to say, I'm not going to want to get on the scale today. So, I have made this decision to start blogging again and log into my blog and see that the last time I blogged was in October of 2010...wow...3 years since I last posted. I have had 2 children since my last blog post. In fact, my baby is about to turn a year old, my sister-in-law is about to get married and I'm trying to look my best for the wedding, but more importantly, I'm trying to get healthy for my children. Somedays, I feel that I'm the only mom who struggles with keeping the house clean, trying to find a balance between quiet time with God and quiet time for myself along with the chaos of raising 4 girls all so close together in age. My oldest started kindergarten this year, so that's been a change, although, I babysit to help pay for Bailey's school bill, so the chaos is still here in different ways. I usually don't have problems with doing the dishes and getting laundry done...it's the rest of the chores that tend to bury me. The bathrooms are always in disarray, the bedrooms are lucky to see a made bed, the livingroom...no, the couch is a revolving door of clothes. If they're not Chris' clothes from the night before, they're Bailey's clothes from the morning of getting ready for school, then there's the folded laundry that didn't quite get put away and now is mixed in with the dirty clothes (which makes them dirty in my mind), so back in the laundry they go. Then the toys, I barely ever see my floor for the mess of toys. "This will pass" they say, "You'll miss it when it's gone" they say, "Enjoy them while they're little" I'm told over and over again. I try to embrace these heartfelt adages, but my head tells me this is wrong. I'm a stay at home wife and mother, the house should be spotless, I shouldn't struggle with these things, there shouldn't be layers of dust on everything we own, the windows shouldn't look like they've never been washed...I could go on, but I digress. So, not sure how I got off on that tangent...but this is supposed to be about losing weight. I said all of that to say this, I have been eating right, and exercising for 2 weeks tomorrow (minus yesterday) and this is what I have noticed. When I eat right and exercise for at least 30 minutes everyday, I feel better. I'm not just talking in a physical sense. I feel better about myself, I feel better healthwise, I feel better in general. I have more energy to get some of these things done that I struggle with on a daily basis. I tend to clean more, my kitchen looks better because I have the energy to clean up the dishes as soon as they're made dirty, the laundry gets done because I don't want to see the house I just cleaned made dirty by a basket of folded laundry sitting there. I like to see the scale go down, in fact, I think that's what motivates me to workout on a regular basis because I know that when I put the effort in to eat right and exercise, I will eventually see the scale go down. What is it about that number on the scale? It's such a daunting thing...it's almost as if it holds my everything in it's tiny little display. If it's more than it should be, I can react by getting depressed, or react by trying harder to make it go down. If it's a smaller number, I find that it motivates me to do even better the next day...but it's a slow pace. I think of the days after my 4th baby was born. I hit my goal, I was under a 40 BMI...I was NEVER going back...and here I am, well over that...again. Why do I do this to myself? I just don't understand. I was so happy when the scale said I had met several personal goals, and now I'm starting all over again. On Saturday morning, I started the weekend just .8 pounds away from my first small goal of being under 250 again (and saying goodbye to 250 for the last time in my life), today, I'm afraid of what that tiny little display is going to tell me. Did I fail to make my first small goal because I was sick and decided to make bad choices? Or will I succeed because what were some awful choices in my mind, weren't quite as bad as I thought they were? Only time will tell, but I will know in a few short hours when I go for my 30 minute workout and weigh in. If you made it through this entire post today, you deserve a gold star...really. Hopefully all the blog posts won't be as long as this one...and hopefully most of them won't go off on other tangents like this one...but I just feel so out of sorts today. Maybe because it's Monday, maybe because I feel it's been a long weekend. I don't know, but here we go. Starting from ground zero. It's time to make this happen.