Cami invited me to join awhile ago, but I haven't posted an introduction yet. My name is Michelle, I have three children and I've been married 8 years. About 4 years ago I decided I wanted to be healthier so I invited two other friends, also fellow moms, to start running with me. We ran our first 5k that year and it was amazing! Since then, I've run another 5k and a 10k last year. I was doing really well keeping up with my running/exercising but when I became pregnant with #3 things have been very different.
I was pregnant my last year of college and not only was my pregnancy hard, my classes were too. I had my baby during my last semester and a month later I had to do my final clinical rotation. Having to work 40 hours while my husband (who took that same semester off from school so I could work and our kids didn't have to be in daycare) took care of our 1 month old and two other children, was harder than I ever imagined. We made it work but I was so stressed from being gone so much and the class/work load I had, exercising wasn't on my to do list.
The stress from my rotation ended but then I was stressed with studying for my last final before graduation. I made it through and graduated though, so yay! But I was tired from everything, I felt I needed a break. So again, I didn't exercise much, I just wanted to veg and not have to worry about studying and enjoy being home with my family. So I did, for about two months until I needed to study for my licensure exam. More stress. But I finished with that and passed my test, yay!
During this whole time, I kept telling myself, I'll start exercising and being more healthy as soon as
this is finished...as soon as
this is finished...ok, as soon as
THIS is finished. Yeah, nothing came of it. This whole year I've let stress eat me alive and I've totally compensated by eating. After having my baby, I was under my pre-pregnancy weight and it felt awesome. But today, I'm ashamed to say I've put on 27 lbs. I about choked when I got on the scale. Who puts on 27 lbs in 9 months?!
So that's my story and here I am. I realize I have two main problems when it comes to my weight. The first, stress keeps me from wanting to be healthy. The second, after a long day, I feel like I deserve a reward so after the kids go to bed is when I treat myself. The first I'm doing really well with. Instead of having a huge to do list that never ends, I've been getting things done so they're not hanging over my head. That's made a huge difference, doing things sooner rather than later. But the second thing, I haven't figured out how to get that out of my head. Any suggestions there would be great. I'm ready to not be so unhealthy. I want to feel better about me and right now, I don't like myself very much.
