live your life with purpose
Sometimes you get on a roll and sometimes you get on the coast vibe. Right now I feel on a roll. A shift if you will. Attitude? Perhaps. The moon? Perhaps. The timing? Perhaps. Things are fun right now. When you love your job, things …
I have a friend. Her name is Aileen. I have never actually met her. We are online friends. Facebook friends. I admire her greatly. She is a writer, she is hilarious, she is a life coach and an overall badass. Her newsletter is amazing and …
I have heard this so many times. I just want my body back. If only I could get my body back. I looked so much better before I had a baby. I used to be so thin in high school. I want my skinny jeans to fit again.
First. You didn’t lose your body. Nobody stole your body. You don’t need to “get it back.”
I remember when I had my first kid. I was soooo young. Holy cow. I was 22. I remember everything I had always heard was you should be back into your “normal” clothes at your six week post baby checkup. WTF?? The pressure was crazy. I mean, who fucking made up that rule? The comments were crazy. It was the “you better lose that baby weight.” “You don’t want to get pregnant again before you’ve had a chance to lose that baby weight.” “It’s not hard, just put your mind to it.” First of all, what new mom has a damn mind? We don’t have time to think about anything, except taking care of a newborn baby. We are fighting with lack of sleep, hormones going crazy, giant boobs, bleeding and sore vaginas and wondering why the hell we decided to have kids in the first place.
At the hospital it’s all cool and nice. Then you get home and it’s like, now what? I remember feeling so overwhelmed. My child ate every two hours. I couldn’t nurse. Another thing that new moms are shamed for. I felt so guilty. I felt like I was short-changing my baby. But then the selfish emotions came knocking. I felt good, because I wanted to lose that weight and I didn’t want to eat. So there was that negotiating going on inside me. Then realization comes knocking reeeaaalllly loud. Realization tells you the straight up in your face truth–this is going to really hard. When we are pregnant we tell ourselves and we tell our friends how we can’t wait to wear normal clothes again. Then after we get there and it all sinks in, we think, well shit, maybe being pregnant wasn’t so bad. It’s all fun and games until even our fat pants don’t fit. LOL
Then when a person actually does come back to their pre-pregnancy weight, you hear things like, “Look how fast she bounced back.” “Wow, she looks amazing.” “I wish I could look like that.” And there we have the constant comments on our bodies and the constant comparison of bodies. It’s no wonder so many women have body image issues, self-esteem issues, disordered eating and shitty relationships with food.
I have four kids and I distinctly remember thinking this 6 week thing was a hard and fast rule I had to follow. Why??????
When we are focusing on changing our bodies after having babies, we are taking away from the process of being in the moment with our babies. It’s normal! What happens to our bodies is normal. Take the time to enjoy your baby and take the time to do what you want to do with your body. It’s your process. Trying to go back to somewhere in the past is absurd. This whole glamorizing of women who after 6 or 8 weeks out from having a baby are back to normal, needs to stop. Let these new moms enjoy their baby time. There is no reason to rush. Women are badasses. Plain and simple.
Look at the process of how the body changes even just in those nine months of being pregnant. Give the body time to recover. It’s okay to want to look a certain way and it’s okay to want to change. I always say do what you want. It’s your life and they are your reasons. Change how you want. Don’t change because someone tells you that you need to or that you should. Don’t change because society thinks getting back into your skinny jeans 6 weeks after having a baby is the be all end all goal. Fuck that.
Our bodies are constantly changing. We can never go back to what we were. We go through puberty, we get our periods, we get pregnant and then we go through peri-menopause and menopause. Nothing is linear. And nothing is “normal.” Every single one of us is going to be different. Everything about each of those experiences is going to be different for all of us. No two women will have the same experience. That is what is so great about us. And that is why we don’t need to conform to those outdated ridiculous standards that someone put in place to make us feel like crap about ourselves. Every stage of your life is an opportunity to get in there and learn about yourself. Love yourself, love your body and live each stage of change.
Life goes by fast enough. Children grow up fast enough. Use your timeline to make the changes you want to make. Stop trying to be somewhere else in your life. Get in the present and live every day.
Be One I have two people, two women, as the subject of this blog post. Two women who had a huge impact on my life and who were mentors for me. We always have an effect on someone. Maybe it’s one person, but more than …
It’s a common thing. Have you taken this drive in your car? Car binges. Car overeating. Binge/restrict. Restrict/binge. Many, many people have done this and still do. Eating disorders are a real thing. They are very prevalent in our society. It can be super hard …
I’ve challenged myself to try new things, go on adventures and get my brave on. Well, I can’t really go on many adventures because 2020, but I have been putting in more time learning and more time working on me. Self-development they call it. I’m not ashamed to say that when I first started coaching my nutrition clients I felt shit scared. But, I put in the work and I put in the study and I find ways to empower them to want to change. I don’t like to tell people what to do. I want them to be in on the decision-making. We find ways together, to help push toward their goals. Not my goals for them. Their goals. It took me some time to come around. It took time for me to change. It’s not an instant thing. I know how it feels.
I used to think that when it came to fat loss, that if I just ate less and moved more, that would be good enough. Or if I just ate clean, I could eat as much as I wanted. I thought all the cardio would be good enough. I thought all the good food would be good enough. Sure, that’s part of it, but not to extremes. The biggest needle pusher is mindset. I found that out when I lost over 45 pounds. I finally figured out the trick. It wasn’t all or nothing. It wasn’t restriction and then overeating again and then restricting again. And then again saying, “I’ll start Monday.” The magic is doing things consistently. And changing the mindset. Changing how I thought about things changed everything.
I remember when things felt hard. I wanted to run the other way as fast as I could. And I did. I did for a long, long time. I was justifying every single excuse I was making. Every shitty behavior. I had an excuse. The in my head voices told me to do the easy thing. Run the other way. That’s easier. Just east whatever you want. Just drink whatever you want.
Fear. The unknown. Not being sure if I really wanted to change, even though I told myself I did. All these things are super common and I felt every single one of them. It can be so hard to kick that can down the street. The chatter is loud and it can be extremely hard to reframe those voices.
It’s so easy to go back to the comfort zone. You know, the blankie, the Netflix, the couch and the potato chips. Our bodies crave that comfort. It’s warm. It feels safe and yummy. But the thing is, nothing changes though, unless you change something. I changed. I finally changed my behaviors and my habits. I took responsibility and quit justifying the behaviors that were taking me nowhere.
But the thing is. There is so much information out there. Where does one start? Start small. Something every day. Start snowman building. Build the habits. Change the mindset. Practice being better. Practice making better choices. Start with the basics. What are the basics?
Guess what most people don’t get enough of? Sleep
Guess what most people don’t get enough of? Nutrient dense foods
Guess what most people don’t get enough of? Movement
Guess what most people don’t get enough of? Protein
Guess what most people don’t get enough of? Water
Those are my basics. You don’t have to do every single one of them right away. Start with one. Do it for a week or two and then add another. Keep building these behaviors until they become easy.
Motivation will come. Mindset change will come. Positive things will start to happen. Don’t give up. Show up and be consistent.
That’s what I did. I showed up. I did the work and I got the results. I did it even when I didn’t feel like it. If you are going through change and it feels uncomfortable, keep pushing yourself because on the other side is something really, really good.
I’m always here for you if you need help and accountability.
nos·tal·gia /näˈstaljə,nəˈstaljə/ noun noun: nostalgia; plural noun: nostalgias a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. I was having coffee this morning and thinking about what I wanted to write about. Nothing came to …
It’s never a good time. How would you know if it was? The admission is hard. The decision is hard. The finality of it is hard. Today was a day like that. Today was a final decision day. Pets are an important part of our …
I did a thing. And then got slammed.
On November 25, 2020, I submitted something I wrote. It was to an online site, using a writing prompt. The parameters were pretty easy. Start with this phrase … and end with this phase… and write 1000-3000 words. So I did. I’ve never put my writing out there like that. I’ve published a ton of blog posts and a few short stories, but I have never publicly thrown down like this. I was nervous and was definitely feeling self-conscious. The story was fiction, so that was a little different for me to write, but I thought why not. I thought it would be fun to stretch myself a little bit. I thought my story was a little dark, but decent.
It felt great. I felt like I really did a good thing and was supporting myself and pushing myself. I was super proud of myself. So when I received an email a few days later with a notification that someone commented on my post, I was really excited to see what that person had to say. I read the “critique” and immediately felt like someone punched me right in the gut. You know that gut feeling, where you just want to crawl in a hole and hide. The kind where you feel it throughout your whole body. Every single inch of your body feels the shame and humiliation. The hotness of those feelings radiating throughout your body. It’s so tangible right now as I write this. That feeling sure stuck. The feeling of being so embarrassed and wondering why you even tried. Yeah, that feeling. It was gut-wrenching for sure. All the emotions circled around for days. More than days actually.
I felt like such a failure and I questioned everything about my writing. That feeling stayed with me for a while. I didn’t want to write anything. I couldn’t. It blunted my creativity for several weeks. There was nothing critique-y about it. It was pretty much a full body slam. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I have not gone back to that site. I don’t know if I will submit anything there again. I might. It will probably take a long, long time if I do. I can’t let one person’s opinion sway me from continuing.
I think about the things people say and their unsolicited opinions and advice, and I try to put myself in other people’s shoes. For example, I liken this to when someone who is trying to make some positive changes in their life. This person decides in order to change they should start working out. They buy a gym membership. It takes guts to put yourself out there. Then this person goes to the gym and gets made fun of because they are overweight or not doing an exercise correctly. The point is they showed up. They showed up to try and make some changes. They showed up to be better. Isn’t that enough?
I showed up for myself and got shot down. It took me a while to get over that. And frankly, it still stings. It stopped me in my tracks for a while., but I feel like I am back to being my “normal” self with my writing. I don’t plan to give up. I plan to keep going. I will keep writing. I will keep working at it. Why? Because I love it. Because I care about getting my words on paper and because I care about growing and stretching myself in this craft.
What you say matters. Remember that. You can inspire or you can dishearten. You can motivate or you can discourage. Think about that before you respond. You never know what someone has been through or what someone is going through. Be helpful and be positive.
If something like this has happened to you, I would love to hear how you persevered. I would love to hear how you kept going and how you are doing now. Please let me know. I love to hear from you.
Shine your light.
Yesterday was Christmas. John, Tayler and I took the dogs to LaFramboise Island for a Christmas Day walk. The temp was beautiful, around 45 degrees. We timed it right. By the time we left, the parking lot was almost full. We walked for about an …