Every Excuse In the Book (Part 1)

      It is impossible at my age. I take a medication that prevents it. Menopause. I don't have time for that. I travel too much. For my age, I'm not that bad. I'll do it Monday. Do any of those statements sound familiar? I'm sure I could probably come up with more thoughts that went through my head over the past few years as I have gradually watched my pants get tighter and the 10 pounds I wanted to lose, creep up to a bit more than that. The real truth is, I like interesting food, restaurants and cooking; I hate exercise and the past few years have been very stressful for me. When I get stressed, I bake...and I'm a damned good cook when I want to be and somebody has to eat it!

      We all know “those” people. They might be our sisters, our co-workers or our Facebook friends. They talk or post pictures and information about how they just love to eat nothing but salads, they don't mind drinking a meal or two a day and they think exercise is the most fun thing in the world. They carry their salad dressing out to eat, always order a baked potato dry (if they haven't given up carbs all together) and say they will NEVER have sugar, soda, chocolate, bread, carbs, coffee, dessert, breakfast, whatever...ever again in their lifetime. They are so happy eating nothing and doing constant cardio, weights, 5K's, marathons...and so on. More power to them. I'm not one of them, so if you want that kind of blog post, stop reading now.

      I have to have breakfast, lunch and dinner along with a couple snacks and dessert. If I travel, I'm going to have the regional foods that I love and while I do love a walk on the beach, I truly hate exercise that makes me sweat. With that said, I thought I'd share a blog post or two about what my daughter and I have been doing the past 5 months. She has had numerous people ask her what she has changed in her life and I have actually had a couple people question me too. So, since this started out as a Mother-Daughter blog, we are going to tell this story together. This isn't really a weight loss story, it is a feel better story and we are still works in progress. We also aren't experts at all and wouldn't begin to tell anyone else what to do, I just thought that I'd share a few of the things that have helped us start to take better care of ourselves and survive (and thrive) the past 5 months doing it!

      A little background information as to what made us decide over Christmas that we needed to make a few changes. We are coming at this from 2 different ages, 30 years apart and 2 different body types. My daughter is about 5'3” and works at a place where every meeting, event, gift from her co-workers and social outing included food and drinks. When you throw in every possible restaurant you can imagine and a kid who loves to cook like her mother...6 years in Orlando and she had gained enough weight to feel unhealthy, not fit into her clothes and to be really unhappy with her reflection in the mirror. As her mother, I was worried about her health and I knew that while everything in her life was going really well, she still wasn't happy because she wasn't comfortable in her own skin.
 

     I have an entirely different body type and history. I'm 5'7” and over the past 10 years, the combination of empty-nest, travel and eating out and various stressful situations had made me eat too much and move too little. My clothes were too tight and I was a heartbeat from buying the next size. For the first time in my life my BMI was out of the healthy range and into overweight and I had my first experience with “muffin top” and I didn't like it. I didn't feel like myself anymore and while I have little control over some of the issues in my life...this one was all my fault.

     Over the holidays, my daughter and I decided that we were going to do something and we were going to do it together. We decided to approach this differently than the times we had tried and quit after 2 weeks. This wasn't going to be a diet. We weren't going to set crazy goals or promise to never eat a specific food again. We weren't going to trade meals for protein shakes or take 50 supplements daily. We were going to make realistic changes and have realistic goals. We decided never to think, “I can't have...” but to sometimes think “I choose not to have...” and also to sometimes decide that maybe a piece of pizza or two was just worth it!

     My goals were simple. I wanted all of my pants to fit AND not leave deep ruts in my stomach by the end of the day. I wanted my BMI to be back in the healthy range again and I wanted to help my daughter look and feel good about herself. I had no goals that involved numbers...no pounds, no sizes, just to get healthy again.

     From my daughter: My original goal was to lose 60 pounds, look great for the wedding and not feel like an old person already.

     We started this at the beginning of the year and my daughter has lost 40 pounds so far and gone down 3 sizes to single digits. Her BMI has gone from being in a really bad place to almost in the healthy range and she is having a great time buying the cutest clothes and feeling happier and healthier. She still has a little way to go, but not much and has become a person who actually loves exercise.

     As for me, my BMI is back to being very healthy, my clothes are a size or 2 smaller than they were and the biggest bonus for me is that my migraine headaches are almost gone. I am not sure why, but something that I changed, changed my headaches. That alone was worth what we have been doing.

     So, if you have read this far...you may want to know some of the changes we made and some of the things that have helped us make changes that after the first few weeks we barely noticed anymore, the changes became our normal way of life and we aren't doing without anything we really want. Check out your BMI (Body Mass Index) here.

 

My daughter a few days ago.

 

 

Part 2-Tomorrow