My Transformation Story
Today I’m pausing to look at back at how far I’ve come. Where does this story begin? There are so many small moments that have built my journey to better health and my favorite part about that is that it’s never going to end, I’ll always be pursuing a more healthy, confident version of myself. But for time’s sake, I’ll begin at becoming pregnant.
I did not have fit pregnancies, at all. In fact I had the opposite. I wasn’t all that healthy before I had kids either. But during pregnancy, I was very uncomfortable, tired, and achy. I was working full time outside of the home at the time, and pretty much ate takeout, fast food, cake, etc. all of the time. I gained 60ish lbs with each of my pregnancies...maybe more, I stopped looking at the scale after a certain point.
After I had Meadow and Sage, I was just exhausted. All of the time. I had transitioned to SAHM life and I was overwhelmed and alone most of the day. I was miserable with my weight and just felt icky. I carried the baby weight of two back to back pregnancies. None of my clothes fit. However vain that may sound, I was just uncomfortable and didn’t feel like myself at all. I was a new mom to two little baby girls, only 19 months apart. I felt as though I had zero things figured out, and was just trying to survive. But I knew I needed to get my health back on the table. I had high cholesterol and a number of other health related issues.
Sage, my second daughter, had a severe dairy sensitivity which made her colic, and since I was exclusively breastfeeding, I had to cut out every molecule of dairy in my diet! (Spoiler alert: dairy is in EVERYTHING.) And I chose to continue to EBF (exclusively breast feeding) to re-evaluate and completely overhaul my diet, cold turkey.
I slowly began to lose weight from the small change of removing vices of mine like ice cream, cheeses, etc. And then from Feb 2017-December 2018 I ate a completely dairy-free diet and started to feel motivated. I added home workouts in my kitchen to my days when I could with cans of soup for weights and random YouTube videos. I tried my best but I was constantly overwhelmed and distracted. I just felt like I was doing everything for everyone else, which was what I had signed up for, but didn’t I deserve this little shred of time for my workout to myself?
In January 2018, I joined the gym. The first few days I worked hard at getting my girls (one and three) comfortable in the gym's Kids Klub. I had seen an app called SWEAT on Instagram and decided to join. I read about the PWR program inside of the SWEAT app and it caught my eye. I could tell that it contained some fast paced activations (short, difficult but doable) and some weight lifting, with the exact moves, tutorials, reps and timers I needed. It literally took all the thought out of it for me. I started at the recommended 3 times per week, with my added 1-2 days of 10 minutes of HIIT walking, then jogging, then running to eventually HIIT sprint intervals. The program advanced me to eventually a schedule of lifting 6 days/week and doing running intervals of different sorts 2x per week and some LISS walking when I felt like it. I have consistently worked the PWR Program 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 and have done each 1-2 times over the last 2.5+ years!
I started tracking macros and adding much more protein to my diet about 6 months after beginning my fitness journey. I’ve tracked on and off since. There was a time I didn't know what “healthy” meant. Genuinely. I thought I knew, but I was way off. What I thought being healthy meant at the time looked something like lettuce and carrots, no carbs, no sugar, and hours of cardio tons of restriction. I thought models and trainers who's figures I would compare myself to, were superhuman and their job was to workout. Or they had a type of discipline that I could never have as a mom of two. I thought I had an idea what of "eating clean" was, and that diet and weight loss were just restrictions. What I have learned is healthy living isn't all or nothing.
This journey that started out heavily vanity based, with goals measured by scales and pant sizes, transformed into one of health, determination, strength, endurance and fun. I learned to carve out the time I needed. Just started moving and did what worked for me. I didn’t start out “fit” or any sort of in shape. I had all sorts of limitations I felt of why “I can’t." I didn’t drop everything and change my life overnight. I worked and worked chipping away at old habits and starting new ones. At the end of the day the amount of time or days I put in really wasn’t the nucleus of my journey, it was consistency and mindset, it was the effort I put in to each workout, it was allowing room for the days I couldn’t make it to the gym, or had extra cravings. It was not beating myself up. Ending the reward/ punishment system I had made up for myself. These small tweaks in mindset blew up all of my “can’ts”.
It really feels like all of my experiences in my lifetime have culminated to this moment. I've been through some trials, as everyone has, but I've never believed harder or more passionately that everything in life happens for a reason. All of my experiences have brought me to this point. Following dreams. Connecting with people, helping in some small way. This has always been what I've loved, and felt called to do. I never really knew how I'd do it. But here I am doing it. Maybe it was all part of a master plan and meant to be. Maybe it's something I've manifested for years unknowingly? Probably both. I'm excited for the future. And I’m so excited to share it with you.
