The Journey Part 2

 Good morning everyone! 

    Sorry I missed last week, We had been in Vegas for a conference and our ETA of 7:30 pm to get home turned into 11:15 pm for me. Since I had been gone Valentine's Day, Andrew and I ran away from home for a bit last Saturday, so the blog went by the wayside.

This is the week to continue my weight loss journey. I am to the point where I have slowed down losing. I knew it would get there, in fact, everyone, even my doctor, is surprised I haven't hit a stall. I have lost 6 lbs in the last month, bringing my total to a little over 140 lbs. I am STILL chasing the elusive Onederland, but I am 3.1 lbs from it, so hopefully within the next 2 weeks. I also travelled a lot last month, and even though I walked an unreal amount (17 miles in a 24 hour period week before last) and really didn't do bad at eating, travelling still makes it hard. So, I am giving myself grace because I know I am still eating right for the most part and still working out and it will come off.

The first post was about my teenage years. After high school, I started working and honesty, maintained the 150 lbs for quite a while, I got up to 180 once but turned around and got it back down to 150. I worked jobs that I was on my feet all day, first at the Dairy Queen, then Richard's Farm Restaurant, then while at the Farm, I added Richard's Refinery and was working a minimum of 12 hour days every day while I did that, I went back to the Dairy Queen for a bit and then finally to Walmart. I pretty well maintained my weight but told myself since I spent so many hours on my feet, I didn't need to exercise. While at Walmart, I switched jobs from being a sales associate to Loss Prevention. I caught shoplifters. I loved it but I wasn't very strong, which played out in a bad way the day that we had a heavy set lady stealing video tapes. I got beat up, pretty bad actually. ended up in the ER. That day, I decided the being on my feet wasn't enough and started exercising. This was my first stint in running and I got to where I could run a mile, I also dropped a few pounds and then Andrew and I started dating, got married and I got pregnant.

When I got pregnant, I gained 10 lbs almost immediately, nobody could understand it. 3 weeks into my pregnancy, I lost a baby. A lot of people doesn't know Robert was a twin. I had never heard, until then, that you could lose a twin that early in pregnancy and keep the other one. Then, to top it off, they didn't tell me I had actually miscarried. The just said that my baby was still there and I would need to go on bedrest so I didn't lose it. That is a whole other blog post for someday. So, here I was, home alone because Andrew was on the road remodeling Walmart stores, and I could be up 10 minutes for every 20 minutes I laid down. I gained weight, a lot of weight. 68 lbs to be exact. The day I went to the hospital, I weighed 218 lbs. The day I came home, I weighted 209. I started working on getting it off and nothing seemed to work. We lived in Hanover Pennsylvania at the time and I would tell my doctor things didn't feel right and she would tell me I was homesick and probably had a little postpartum depression. So  I settled into this is how life was and me and my 209 lb body tried to be friends. I wasn't depressed, seriously. I loved Robert and was extremely excited by every day with him and Andrew and that is just not part of the post partum depression. We had a pediatrician seperate from my doctor, so after my six week visit after Robert was born, I didn't go to the doctor anymore. We actually didn't even have a family doctor out there, just the OB/GYN.  I wish I would have had a bigger voice to have them do some more checking on me. 

More to come next month.

I want to remind you that our bodies are amazing things. God is incredible when you think about all the things he made happen. All our organs working together, how neat our fingernails and toenails are (and since we were talking about babies, aren't baby toenails and fingernails just amazing?)

Remember for this week that Psalm 139:14 says, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

Just the fact that God can create us to support another life inside of us, and produce a miracle and it happens everyday, that is amazing to me.

And, just because it seems like life is a little crazier than normal and I have my state monitoring visit coming up this week, I am leaving you with my theme song, and actually my word for 2024. 

I picked this word because I want to be stronger not only mentally, but physically. Last year my word was transform. I think I did that, ;-)

So, here is Ann Wilson's Strong because I do know who makes me strong.

My favorite part is "Lord knows I've tried but I'm good at falling down, Thank God you're good at picking me up off the ground". Yep, story of my life, right there.

Have a great week!