Unsubscribing

Confession: I am a hoarder of unnecessary emails.

I just spent the last hour of my life deleting emails that have collected in my inbox that I have never and will never look at. AN HOUR!!!! I began frantically deleting emails and searching for companies like Gap, Staples, and Babies 'R Us, who think it is important to flood your inbox with multiple emails a day about things you don't have the time to buy. In the middle of my deletion mission, I realize that I have created this problem... If I would unsubscribe to the emails, the emails will stop. Here's the part that gets me, I have wasted an hour of my life trying to fix something that could have been avoided in the first place. If I would have unsubscribed to the first email sent, I would have been home free.

With this realization, I discover that the same is true with health and weight loss. I did nor become overweight overnight. It was a slow process. Every bowl of ice cream, every sugary latte, every time I got "seconds" when I was no longer hungry... these things added up and collected themselves in my body, just like those pesky emails. I became overweight because I really love food. There are times that I believe that I have relied on food for comfort that I should have sought from healthier places, like my loving husband or my best friend. A bowl of ice cream for me is like eating a bowl of heaven. BUT... once the bowl is over, so is the happy it brought.

And that is problem with food addiction. No one can be fully satisfied by food. Food is literally just a mode of survival. Now, God made it taste great (and I believe he did so out of love for us), but the primary purpose of food is so that our bodies receive the proper nutrients necessary to keep us alive.

I am learning the power in saying no.

When eating out with friends and that huge basket of chips and salsa approaches, I know that I have the power to say no. Here's the kicker: I have decided beforehand what I will be eating. I use all of that time before the meal comes to focus on the actual conversation between friends. When I realized that I did not eat anything off of my plan and that I don't feel like I am missing out, I know that I am starting to understand the power in no.

So tonight, not only did I delete all those emails, but I took time to say NO! My inbox and my scale should both be a little lighter from now on. :)


-Bethany

Diapers and Diets

So life with twins is a constant circus. With the change in age comes a change in circus theme and production. Our current production: Go Steadfastly Toward Everything We Shouldn’t! Beyond wanting to play with cords or exploring power outlets, my twin boys like to grab anything that looks interesting and taste it. I know this is no different from any other children, but things become so real when they are very present in your life.

This past week my husband had a work commitment that made him arrive later than usual. My boys still go to bed around 6 or 6:30 every night, so I was on bedtime duty alone. This happens on occasion, and we simply make small adjustments to better accommodate the situation. One of those accommodations is changing both boys in the living room, one right after the other. While changing Luke, Josiah saw the tightly rolled, soiled diaper that I had just removed from his brother. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to grab that diaper ball and put it directly into his mouth. Mind you, I am still trying to cloth a wiggly toddler while attempting to keep a soiled diaper from becoming a chew toy for Josiah. Josiah goes into full meltdown, and I could not help but think this is exactly how we are with food.

We know that certain foods are not good for us; we have heard about how damaging certain food is to our bodies and well being. Yet, this week, I wanted so many things that I know good and well are not fueling my body, but on the contrary are fueling unhealthy habits. Because foods like tortilla chips and pumpkin spice lattes are not on plan, I resisted.

Three weeks into Take Shape For LIfe, and I am down over ten pounds, and as of this morning, am officially under 200 lbs! The plan that makes me say no to a PSL, and yes to a better month, week, day, even moment for myself. Like Josiah, I often place all of my focus and attention on from what I am being “deprived”, or why others can “eat whatever they want” and I have to always be conscience of what I am consuming. I can honestly say that seeing real change in how my body looks, how my clothes fit, and how I feel is making all the difference. This plan keeps me on track and away from “soiled diapers”, like the cookies provided at work yesterday…

I have new treats, like getting on the scale this morning to find that I have lost 2 pounds since Tuesday! I’ll stick with those treats and let everyone else have the cookies. :)

Back Stories and Blessings

To get a full perspective of my journey, I want to introduce you to 5 year old me. I was a “chunky” kid (one of those polite terms that really means fat). I was the tallest kindergartener in my homeroom. My weight only increase when I lost my mother November of that year. Being a newly-single dad, my father did the best he could to work full time doing manual labor, then come home to care for two small children. My dad was happy that we ate, what and how much food was the least of his concerns. My brother was going through his picky eater phase, and I was all too eager to please. I was a proud member of the “Clean Plate Club”.

By the beginning of First Grade, I was 100 lbs, and to make matters worse my father convinced me to get a pixie haircut like one of my favorite people. I was a sight to behold! A round-faced overweight child with a terrible haircut and a huge smile. When I look at my school picture from that year I can’t help but smile. It is blatantly obvious that I was motherless, but there is still a twinkle in my eye. I love that girl. That girl loved music and poetry. She loved reading books and drawing pictures. Her imagination took her places far beyond my small hometown. I was 100 lbs of wonderful.

I have seen many interviews with people who lost a significant amount of weight and they speak of hating themselves so they decided to change. My journey is not about hate. I cannot hate this person that God created. I love her. I have always loved her. My weight has never defined me, and that is why something has to change. I have started catching myself teasing about my weight, and using myself as a punching bag for a good punchline. That’s done. I will not immulate self-hatred. My six-year old self would have never stood for it, and I won’t either!

My dad remarried, and with a my new step-mother came more structure especially around meal times. As I grew my round face became less rounded, my clothing better fitting, and my self-assurance unwavering. Let’s fast forward a couple of years to about the fifth grade. By this age, I was still one of the tallest kids in my grade, but we were all comparable in size. My stepmother was a bit of a yo-yo dieter. This dieting on her part had very little effect on me until she invited me to a bible study she was attending at a local church. When she told me there was another girl my age there, I told her I would like to go. I remember arriving and seeing the other girl. I felt so grown up going to a bible study with all women! The title of the study was “Weigh-down Workshop”. It was a biblical approach to weight management and healthy habit. There was an emphasis on one’s poor relationship with food. I remember sitting in that classroom at the church thinking, “Am I fat?”. I told myself that I had to be or my mom would not have brought me, so I dove into the study. If I was fat, I was gonna fix it!

Nothing really changed. Until everything changed- JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, the land where everyone is self-conscious and insecure! There was a point in Junior High that I distinctly remember thinking that all of my friends were so much prettier than I was, so I needed to find something else to make me stand out. I fully embraced humor. I decided if I could be clever and funny that it wouldn’t matter what I looked like. I could still have a shot at catching someone’s attention. Here’s the thing: I was cute! I was so cute, but I never once thought of myself that way. I was the same size as most of my friends, and my awkwardness here was pretty standard.

My negative body image has continued far past junior high. In college I had to focus on my weight because I was a theatre major and I needed to consider costumes and body alterations after initial fittings is a NO GO! You cannot gain or lose weight of any kind after your costume has been assigned and (if you were lucky) altered to you specifically. This is when my pattern of self-sabotage began. I would set a goal (i.e. lose 10 lbs), and then immediately go eat a bowl of ice cream. [Side note: Ice cream may come up a lot because I have a serious love for the stuff…]

I would love to say that I rose above it all and learned how to maintain a healthy weight, but that is not the case. I know that my past pattern of thought has a huge impact on instilled beliefs about my body. I hope that by digging deep into the past and it’s effect on the future that I can change these beliefs to truth. Truths like “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139:14), and that means I have monumental value and worth to my Heavenly Father. Truths like “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), which includes engaging in self-discipline and not self-indulgence. Truths like “The Lord is my strength and my shield. I trust in Him with all my heart. He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy!” (Psalms 28:7). That means I cannot do it alone, and I don’t have to because GOD is my strength. He is my HELP!

My heart is filled with joy, and hope, and peace knowing full-well that God is by my side every single step of this journey. When I look at myself as a six-year old girl who was severely overweight I can count it as joy! When I see pictures of eighth-grade Bethany in denim overalls with frizzy hair and too much eye makeup, I can count it as joy! When I see myself now, a stressed out middle-school counselor with twin toddlers, with too much to do and not enough sleep, I can count it as JOY! Regardless of what the scale says this week, I know that with God’s help I will discipline my body so that my soul is no longer bound by the mental weight of defeat. As I count calories and measure servings, I am counting and measuring my blessings!

Here's to the Beginning

Hello to anyone who might have stumbled upon this.

My name is Bethany and I have a problem.

I am overweight and have been for a large majority of my life. Like so many others, I am finding myself at a decision point: Lose the weight and reclaim pieces of myself back or give up and submit myself to a lifetime of discontentment and the ever-burning question “what if?”. I choose the former because I am exhausted with the latter. I currently am in a size 14/16 pant. If I continue gaining weight I will isolate myself to shopping in specialty stores for “plus-size” women. That is an option. But here is the deal, my body is tired from years of lugging around excess baggage. My mind is tired from constantly thinking about my weight, worrying about how I look in clothing, and feeling hopeless and desperate.

August 2015 my life changed forever. I gave birth to two beautiful twin boys. Over a year later, my boys are becoming more and more active every day, and I fear that soon I will not be able to keep up with them. When the boys were about 5 months, I began to buckle down and try to lose the weight I gained during pregnancy. Eight months later, I had managed to lose 20 pounds. While I am glad that I lost the weight, I hit a wall. After several months of not losing one single pound counting calories and managing what I was eating, a common wave of defeat fell over me. Broken, I reached out to a close friend who told me of a friend of hers who had lost a significant amount of weight in a program called Take Shape For Life. I got in contact with her friend, and two weeks ago I began my journey towards weight loss. My goal seems daunting to me, but sometimes scary goals are important to make.

Here is my goal: I want to lose 50 pounds.

There is no timeline because I tend to self-sabotage when I pressure myself. That number is the goal, but I hope to gain much more than I lose. I want to gain a sense of self-compassion, respect for my body, a new-found confidence in who I am that is not connected to what I weigh. I want to be able to put on an outfit without feeling the need to layer to cover bulges of discomfort. I want to gain an understanding of who I am, what got me to this place, and how I can equip myself so that I never return. I want to gain freedom from endless self-talk that belittles and degrades myself because of a mirror reflection.

I know that a mental shift is as important to my journey as a shift in the scale. It is with that in mind that I am writing this blog. Many weight-loss programs have a physical weigh-in at the end of every week. Consider this my Metal Weigh-in. Some post might be scattered ramblings. Others might hold great breakthroughs. I don’t know. I haven’t lived them yet.

Every story is beautiful. This is mine.