2023 Journey to Health

 I would say my life since my first child 24 years ago has been in a weird love hate relationship with my body, my size  and my own health. Even before my first child I could not claim a healthy relationship with my body. To much external pressure to have the perfect body, the flat abs, to look like my skinny friends and yet I wish I was a skinny as I was the first time I thought I was fat. 

In the last year I have done a lot of growth and no longer have any hate for my body, my body is a strong machine that has supported me through so many things. Three babies, a couple half marathons, different exercise programs and regimes and it has allowed me to enjoy so much food. And I do love food, especially baked goods and anything sweet. I know that there are lots of things that influence my body shape, the number on the scale and how I feel about it all. The biggest growth I have had I think this year is the learning that it's not just my body's physical health that I need be aware of, I need to take care of my mental health. Deal with my stresses and use my strategies to support myself as I go through different stressors. Be that relationship, job or finances. 

So these are my most current pictures. I am the largest I have ever been  and it makes me extremely uncomfortable, but the reality is this is my reality and I put myself here with my poor habits and choices. 

Some of these choices would have been due to convenience and the stress of the last two years. A pandemic and my masters didn't make for a relaxing life and I am not really good at identifying my stress or when I am fully in the a stressed state, which is probably more problematic than one could know. 

Things still aren't as bad as I feel they are though. I mean I am strong, I can still carry things, I can still do hard workouts without getting completely gassed. I have a lot of strength underneath this layer of padding. I am also super thankful that I do not seem to only gain weight in one area, but I gain it all over fairly evenly.

I am not writing this blog hoping people will reply and comment and encourage me, which I have done in the past, I am writing this for me so I can track my journey with my photos and build some new healthier habits in 2023. 

These habits will include 

1. Journalling: I have some beautiful notebooks to journal in and I will also use this platform to journal once a week and overall statement. So planning to have 52 blog entries this year.

2. Meditation: I love meditations to put myself to sleep at night, I want to be more mindful of this practice and I am going to try to start with one meditation a week, and slowly increase to two a week.

3. Stretching: I know my body is doing well by me, it works hard for me, it gets me through each day and I need to return the love and stretch after my workouts more, or stretch at night before bed to get some better sleep.

4. Work outs: I would love to work out 7 days a week, but the reality is that I do not have that dedication yet, I need to slowly build it up and I need to structure my days to include all those things I love to do. This first week I am going to work out every day. Kick start the new year, but once school starts and activities start back up I need to be realistic about my expectations. If I can get in three workouts a week for this whole year that will be amazing!

5. Reading: I am an avid reader, but I will sometimes not do any reading because of my mental health, so I am planning to do 20 minutes of reading every night before I go to bed. I am going to change my ipad watching habit to a reading habit, even if I do turn on the ipad after to go to sleep I will have to read for 20 minutes before I do that. I am also going to get up each morning and read for 20 minutes. 

6. New morning routines and new bedtime routines: By the end of the year I would love to have built a habit in which I wake up each morning and do a 20 minute work out, followed by 20 minutes of reading and 20 minutes of writing. In the evening I would love to have an hour set aside in which I would do 20 minutes of journalling, 20 minutes of stretching and 20 minutes of reading.  I am going to start my mornings with exercising and my evenings with reading. Once those feel set then I will add in the writing. and then the last one. 

To my future self: You are amazing and you can do wonderful things, just keep going one step in front of each other. You just have to keep working on yourself and everything else will come around.