HAPPY NEW YEAR!Well, last year was
quite a year.
Maria, I am just seeing your message now. So sorry about that! I’m guessing you’ve figured things out for yourself, seeing that this is six months later, but if you still have questions, please reach out.
To start, a family photo:
We did family photos this past fall for the first time. I’m so grateful to have them! Mae is 3 now (!!!) with her older sisters being 9 and 7. Time continues to fly by.
2021 was a year of major changes for me. I got divorced, moved (three times!), renovated a house, sent the kids off to school for the first time, and left behind a life as a stay-at-home-and-homeschooling-mom to become gainfully employed. It was honestly like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
All of these changes definitely shook up the kids’ lives, and they are working on adjusting to the new reality. It’s been bumpy for everyone in different ways. The dust continues to settle, and we’re going two steps forward, one step back.
Well, let’s talk about the food.
It was a disaster. Entire frozen pizzas, whole pans of brownies, all of the lemon bars, so many Reese cups, Christmas cookies galore, chocolate filled croissants…the list goes on. I was not able to get a grip on things. Portion control did not exist - every container was a single serving. Decadent meals in restaurants and cocktails to boot. Thankfully, having been vegetarian for 24 years at this point, my falling off the wagon still had some parameters, but boy it was ugly.
And embarrassing! Here I am, leading the maintenance group, and struggling profusely with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all the time in between. I cohost a monthly WFPB pitch in, too! The self-loathing was heavy.
I was struggling for about the past year and a half, but it became a real issue in the second half of 2021. At first I just had an extra five-ish pounds, then last summer everything went to shit food-wise and the weight quickly spiraled.
Here’s a nice graph to illustrate what happened:
As you can see, things got so ugly I quit weighing myself. With the holidays and all the activities, I knew that I was just setting myself up for failure if I tried to make changes at that point. It was a free fall.
So, I made a plan. Get through the holidays, then get my head out of my ass and get to business. Based on previous experience, I knew that to stick to the plan I needed to do two things: cut down on salt and ditch the sweeteners. For whatever reason, when I do those to things, I can stick to the plan. No cravings at all, happy as a peach to eat broccoli and potatoes without a thought about cookies and candies.
And I did it. The day after Christmas I made a bowl of Jeff’s oatmeal with frozen fruit, and I was off to the races. I jumped on here to rejoin MWL and…they changed the format. No longer do you just punch in your weight and add it to the tally, but it’s a process that requires time and writing and self-reflection. This is most likely the best way for people, to be sure, but I’ve been trying to find time to get online to write this in over a week, so I know I don’t have time to do more than a weekly weigh in right now.
Right now I’d like to just post quick progress on Fridays here, but no guarantees. Taking on another step might not be feasible.
A quick note about my weight: I’m sure many people look at this graph and think, “Wait a sec, her max is 132? What is she smoking???” I know, that sounds low. I have a very small frame. I’m currently around 126 and have a roll literally hanging over the top of my pants. I was watching a Plantiful Kiki video earlier today and she was talking about reaching her current weight of 123, and I was like, “What?!” I am not 3 lbs away from looking like her. She and I are the same height, but for me to be that lean I would be around 108.
What I am trying to say is that every body is different, and not to compare one person to another, because what is a great weight for one person is not the right weight for another.
Starting weight 12/26: 131.8 lbs
Weight on 1/3: 126.6
Change: -5.2
Thanks for taking the time to read this novel of an update. Hopefully I’ll get the time to post again soon!