Information Gathering...by Liimu

To some, it may look like I'm not doing anything. And in a certain sense, they'd be right. I'm not enduring punishing workouts in the gym. I'm not counting every calorie that goes in my mouth. I'm not weighing and measuring my food. I'm not eliminating sugar, carbs or fat from my diet.

I'm focused on intuitive eating and so most of what's happening is in my own mind. I'm focusing on eating what my body wants, when it wants it, honoring its cues of when I'm hungry and perhaps even more challenging, when it is full. (Still working on that one, if I'm being honest.) I'm finding new ways to exercise, including dancing with my kids, like last night, long walks in the park, Zumba, kickboxing and spinning. I still love running, so I signed up for Broad Street - I consider myself one of the lucky ones as it sold out in a record-breaking five hours this year - but I'm totally open to walk/running it rather than feeling like I'm a failure if I don't run or jog every step.

What's perhaps even more important about this phase of my journey is that I'm gathering tons of information and processing it all, applying it when it feels pertinent. I went back to my holistic doctor, Dr. Michael Cheiken, and he ordered labwork to test for every imaginable vitamin deficiency or metabolic disorder. Twenty-three vials of blood in all. I've been finding incredibly interesting articles and eBooks on the internet, and I've talked to tons of people who have made this journey and been successful at achieving and maintaining their ideal weight through intuitive eating. Here are some of the things that seem to be important recurring themes, across all my conversations and reading:

1. Stress is a huge obstacle in weight loss and being generally healthy, so I mostly need to just CHILL OUT and trust the process

2. Statistically, it is a proven fact that dieting has a 98% failure rate and if it were a medical practice, it would be banned. It continues to thrive essentially due to the 68 billion dollar industry that profits as a result of its continuation.

3. There are real obstacles at play, related to my age and having just recently had a baby, but most of them are in my own head.

4. I will likely be successful in my efforts but it could take awhile for me to achieve my ideal weight and even longer for my head to really be healed from all the years of yo-yo dieting.

I have to say that learning all these things, hearing them from people I respect and admire (and people who aren't afraid to tell me things I might not want to hear) had a surprising effect on me. In my heart, I felt relieved and happy, much the way I felt when I was told I would need to abstain from a drink one day at a time for the rest of my life. It's not an easy path, but it feels a whole lot easier than the one I was on.

I will continue to share with you guys my progress. I am loving this life I've been blessed with and am so excited for the newest leg of the journey.

Week 5, Trust the Process by Liimu

So, this was an interesting week. Last Thursday, I snuck a peek at the scale and was PISSED to see that I was up from where I was the previous week. I started to chalk it up to a visit from Aunt Flow, but then realized that her visit was more than a week off yet. Dammit. Must just be that yet again, this whole process isn’t working. Why isn’t it working??

Now, in the past what I have done is say f*** it and hit the cupboards for anything salty or chocolate-y I can find. Well, I am happy to report that this week I took a very different approach and decided to at least eliminate the human error component of what might not be working about my plan. I tightened up my food even more and hit the gym even harder. I went through the whole weekend taking special care to watch my sodium intake and up my water to 5 liters from four, just in case I was somehow holding onto water thanks to the occasional pretzel knot I’d been enjoying along with my kids.

My weight didn’t drop much – I was still up .8 by my official weigh in day, but what did surprise me was that good old Aunt Flow showed her ugly face five days early! It was PMS, after all! Good thing I didn’t throw in the towel. In fact, if I look back on the past six months, that pattern is exactly why I still have 40 pounds of baby weight to lose. I would have an expectation of what I wanted the scale to do (an occurrence over which I have absolutely no control) and then when that expectation wasn’t met, I would get frustrated, lose faith in the process and sabotage all my efforts. There’s a saying in recovery that “an expectation is a resentment waiting to happen.”
So, just for this week, I have had a small triumph in that I pushed through the discomfort and frustration and stayed the course. I hope to have a victory as a reward for my efforts when I step on the scale next week. Either way, at least I have learned that when my body is acting like something strange is happening (like a hormonal shift due to the onset of my period), it probably is.

BodyMedia FIT update: I’m still enjoying the BodyMedia FIT band a lot. I wish it were thinner, as I feel a little self-conscious wearing it all the time, but fortunately I can leave it off if I need to (like when I have a meeting to attend) and then manually enter any exercise information, if necessary. They’ve recently released a new product called the BodyMedia CORE, which is a lot thinner. Lucky you all who get to purchase that one! It’s really my only complaint right now, and given the fact that I’m used to wearing my iPhone on my arm while running to track my distance, it’s a pretty minor complaint, at that. I did hit some personal bests this week. On October 16 (my long run day), I :

- burned 3840 calories
- took over 22,000 steps
- was active for nearly 2.5 hours

Coincidentally, that’s also the day I got the most sleep. Tee hee! I like having these notifications, because it motivates me to compete in what I think is the most healthy way possible: against myself.

More next week – don’t miss it!

What Goes Up, Must Come Down...by Liimu

Nine months up, nine months down...that's what they say. So, when I was coming up on Max's six month birthday (it was yesterday), I decided it was time to get serious about losing this baby weight. I asked Robin Gorman-Newman if it would be okay for me to chronicle my weight loss journey for all of you. I mean hey, I shared with you guys all the ups, downs, ins and outs of the pregnancy. Why not share with you all the sweat, blood and tears of becoming my best self after the fact? I promised Robin I would also share all the idiosyncrasies of raising four kids and feeding them and a 6'2, 230 pound husband while trying to eat clean and workout like a maniac.

So, here we go...WEEK ONE

The day before my journey began a friend asked me if I was on a diet, almost as if she expected me to say yes (maybe because I've spent most of my life either on a diet or cheating on one). This time, my answer was a solid and resounding "NO." Now, it just so happened that I hadn't actually started my Dreambodies journey - yesterday was Day 1, as you know. But to be honest, even if I had been asked the question after I started, my answer would have been the same.

I don't believe in dieting anymore. We've all read the magazine articles that talk about the fact that diets don't work, and I believe that to be true. It doesn't work to go "on" a diet, because that presupposes that eventually you will go "off" the diet. In my case, my period of being "off" a diet more than counterbalance any of my good dieting efforts.

All that being said, though, my reason for being so convicted about not being on a diet when my friend asked me had less to do with the efficacy of diets and everything to do with the Law of Attraction. The fact is, I am done with perceiving myself (and being perceived) as someone who has to diet in order to have a great body, beautiful skin, and tons of energy.

So, I am not on a diet. I am on...

A MISSION.

I am stoked to be on Dreambodies, because I basically get my marching orders - daily meal plan, workout, etc - and then I don't think about it anymore. If I feel myself weakening, I send an e-mail to my trainer and he e-mails me right back with an answer to my question, words of encouragement or a virtual kick in the pants.

I am on a mission to become a leaner, stronger version of myself, better even than before I got pregnant.

I am on a mission to show my daughters that motherhood, aging, and fierce beauty don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I am on a mission to reclaim the inner vixen, inner goddess, inner Betty Boop that I have carried with me all these years but only in small spurts have been released to the outside world.

I am on a mission to follow through on my commitment to myself, my health and my children's desire to have me around for a long time.

I am on a mission. Feel free to come along for the ride. :)

Thank Heavens for Little Girls, and Big Ones Too...By Liimu

I have a theory. I believe that the size of my kids directly correlates not with their weight at birth, but rather with how much weight I gained during each pregnancy. When my eldest daughter was born, she weighed 6.5 pounds and her thighs were so skinny, I could circle one of them with my thumb and middle finger and have finger left to spare. Now, at 8 years old, she wears a size 7.5 women's shoe, is nearly 5 feet tall and weighs as much as many of my friends. I gained 90 pounds when I was pregnant with her. 16 months later, after gaining only 45 pounds, I gave birth to her sister, who weighed in at a respectable 7.5 pounds, but had not reached Devon's 2-month length by her 4-month birthday. She is 7.5 years old now and shares clothes with her 4 year old sister.

I've tried to explain this to my 8 year old when she complains that she wants to lose weight (sad, but true) because she wants to weigh what the other girls in her class weigh (75 pounds, vs. her 110). I try to explain to her that she is growing at exactly the rate she has her entire life - which is literally heads and shoulders above her peers. I tried to explain that when she was 6 months old, she wore 12 months clothes, and when she was 12 months old, she wore 2T, and when she was 2 years old, she wore 4t, etc. Nothing has changed. I tried to explain to her that as long as she stays active and makes healthy choices, she will continue to be healthy and beautiful. I try to set a good example for her of how to do just that.

My sister pointed out that there is one thing I could do better than I'm doing now, which is to set a good example for her around loving and accepting myself. I realized recently that the extent to which I have been pushing myself to get back to my prepregnancy weight quickly (like all those freaking celebrities do that are all over the tabloids - think Penelope Cruz), I have been sending a conflicting message to the love-yourself-you're-perfect-just-the-way-you-are message I've been trying to send her since she saw her first class photo that looked like she had taken a wrong turn from the elementary school and ended up in a day care center. Much the same way my beautiful 8-year old daughter is built to be closer in size to her 12 year old cousin than her 7-year old sister, I'm built to make big, strong healthy babies by having big strong, healthy pregnancies. Love it, deal with it, accept it and get over it. And just as sure as she will blossom into a statuesque beauty in her teens and adulthood, I know for a fact I will be back to my beautiful, sassy post-partum self in no time. I've done it before (three times!!), and I will definitely do it again.

So to all my girls all over the world, whether you're 4'10" or 5'10", whether you gain only 10 pounds when you're pregnant or you gain 100, I challenge you to love and accept yourself as you love and accept your children, your nieces, your mothers, your sisters and your friends. I challenge you to hold yourself to the same firm but gentle standard of healthy eating and activity you would want your daughters to follow. I will not force myself to workout for an hour every day anymore than I would force my children to. But I will try to find ways to be active. And if it's a beautiful day and I've been working on the computer all day, I will say to myself, "hey, get outside for awhile!" just like I would say it to my kids. And when I reach for that second piece of cake, I will lovingly ask myself if I'm really still hungry or just wanting to taste a little bit more, just like I do my kids - and if it's the latter, I promise myself that I can have it again in a day or two (and I even put it in the freezer so I can do just that).

It was a huge epiphany for me to realize that (a) I'm doing a pretty good job managing the beast of insecurity that threatens to take hold of my girls and (b) the one area where I can improve is to slay the beast within myself.