Cade and I went up to Salt Lake for Lizz's baby shower. After 3 grandsons, the McCombs side of the family is finally having a girl. Seeing all the cute little baby clothes, with pink and ruffles, and little cupcakes..but Cade's clothes are pretty cute too, and the baby totally makes up for any lack of squeals that boy clothes may cause on my part.
I got told I was skinny today.
I haven't heard that in a long time, not since 9th grade. It was nice.
I spent most of my high school years hovering around the 160's. Sometimes, when I'd go on a diet and run, I could make it down to the high 150's, but never below that. I was never really comfortable with how I looked, but I didn't know how to get past it.
Then I went off to school. My freshman 15...well let's just say it was the freshman 30 almost 40. I remember wearing sweatshirts all the time, and purposefully turning down the thermostat so that it would be cold enough to justify wearing the sweatshirt. I felt like, if it was big and baggy, then no one would guess that what was making the sweatshirt bulge was really my stomach.
The end of my sophomore year I came home and the worst had happened. My mom looked better than me.
I decided to change right then and there, and that summer I lost 20 lbs. Oh man it was tough. I had to wake up really early to have it be cool enough to exercise, and I remember telling people all the time, "No thanks, I'm not hungry," when they offered me something like cake or cookies. It's hard to admit that you need to diet. I felt like I had reached a certain point where I didn't really see just how big I was.
The weight started coming off and my confidence started going up, excpet I HATED it when people would ask me if I'd lost weight. I felt like it was them saying, "Oh good, you're finally starting to lose weight, because you needed to." I remember standing on the scale and I was the weight that I was in high school and it made me so happy! (which is ironic because back in high school I hated that weight).
After Aaron and I got married, I started to put it back on again. Not too much, but I was back up to 170. And then...I got pregnant.
Aaron and I had been talking about having a baby and I was terrified. Not of being pregnant, but of the inevitable weight gain. I saw the 200's looming in my future. I could picture myself just eating and eating and eating.
But I didn't. Food lost all appeal to me while I was pregnant, and for some reason, I didn't gain any weigtht. In fact, I weighed 3 lbs less when I was about to give birth in the hospital than when I was very first pregnant. I thank Aaron for that. He has such a good attitude about food. Food is not his life (like it was mine), it's there to keep us alive. He eats when he's hungry and stops when he's full. Amazing concept, and one that I knew, but had never really implemented. Pregnancy put me so much in tune with my body that I was able to stop when I got full, and not feel deprived. If I wasn't hungry, I didn't eat.
After I had Cade, 20 lbs fell right off in about 3 days. I've lost another 5 in the past 4 months. I'm down to 140 (which at 5'9" puts my BMI from 27.8 at my heaviest to 20.7) which is less than the weight on my driver's license. And I'm happy with myself. I look in the mirror and feel beautiful. I don't feel like a fat slob standing next to my husband and sisters.
And I got told I was skinny today.
P.S. Cade rolled over for the first time yesterday. He cheats. He has to push off from the bars of his crib to roll over, but hey, he did it on his own. I'm counting it.
