Last year we moved into a new neighborhood, it is the neighborhood I have wanted to live in for a few years now. We have great schools, amazing neighbors that I adore, my very wonderful sister-in-law lives here and we have two awesome neighborhood pools that we spend a lot of time at each summer. We do a lot of community activities and our kids are on the swim team. It is seriously suburbia utopia.
Our neighborhood is filled with moms who should be in magazines, especially at the pool. They are beautiful, they are fit, they have perfect smiles and rock their bikinis. I am truly in awe of them and pretty sure I have been caught staring and seem like some weird creeper. I am not, just in awe. It is clear they are having fun with their kids at the pool and very clear they work hard to keep their body in tip top shape.
I do not.
I am what I consider 'in the middle' -- I am about 15-20 pounds overweight, have some bumpy thighs, and a belly that I can grab a good handful of every time I sit down. Most days I don't focus on my body, I don't bash myself although I would like to be in better shape and feel more comfortable in my own clothing.
I put on my suit today and it hit me that the suit is now 7 years old and a little big but my other suit is a little too small. I decided to go a little too big and try to save myself from feeling like back fat was hanging off the back. You may think I am making that up but at the end of last summer, my youngest poked some of said back fat and asked why I had that and no one else did.
That.felt.amazing.
But not quite amazing enough for me to do something about it, so now I have another 5 pounds to rid myself of and still stuff my face with cookies more often than I care to admit.
So I don my suit and am off to the pool and I am feeling ok. It is loose in the belly, modest, and has a little skirt for a bottom. I swam, I had fun, I splashed with the kids, walked around and didn't think much about it. Of course that all came to a crashing halt when I saw a few pictures of myself. I won't lie, I felt like I got hit with a ton of bricks.
My top was sagging in many very wrong places and I really believe the skirt made me look bigger. I now know my poor boobs need some actual support and not the type a 7 year old bathing suit missing its underwire can provide. I came home and just stared at myself in the mirror and said, "This is not who I want to be."
So I am here, I am going to be making my own meal lists and workout daily and share it all here. I want to remember how I felt today even though there are other stories leading up to this day I will share later. I am not quite feeling doing some program or following someone else's meal plan, I want to make my own. And it won't be perfect, cause I am not perfect. But this is the beginning of my change.
