Ready for another long one guys? J
I just want to start off by saying I have the absolute best
friends and support system. I have been
so overwhelmed by the response my blog post last week got, I honestly didn’t
expect many people to read or respond. Not
only did many people comment on my facebook page, but sent me personal
messages, text messages or have talked to me in person. So many people have reached out and said that
they have struggled with a lot of the same things I mentioned, people I never even
knew struggled with similar issues.
Because of all the positive reinforcement I’ve received I
don’t feel nearly as self conscious as I used to when I go swim. In fact last night when I went to the pool
there was a hard core swimmer in the lane next to me and I noticed he had a
kick board, buoy, and some weird hand flipper things, and so when he was
catching his breath I worked up the courage to ask him about how he uses those
things, and guess what guys… HE WAS SUPER NICE!! He even let me use the hand
flipper things, which are to help you improve your stroke, and I found my
stroke is atrocious… I totally need to work on that.
And then when he left I still had a few more laps to go and
as he walked away he said goodbye and encouraged me to keep swimming. Normally I would be way too scared to talk to
someone who was such a hard core swimmer, or athlete because I’m so not
anywhere close to their level… but I learned that hey they are pretty nice
people and he mentioned he’s self taught and everyone has to start
somewhere.
I’ve wanted to open up about this for a while but I’ve just
been so nervous, and after the response I got I wish I had said something
sooner! I had some people ask what I’m
doing and to offer tips and things like that.
Well I’m certainly not qualified in the least, but I thought I’d give a
few points of things that I have changed in the past almost 2 months to make
changes in the way I live my life.
First I have known for a while I needed to make a change, I
was unhappy with my life and the way I was treating my body, but I didn’t
really know where to start on my own and I didn’t really want to start. When you are making changes like this you
can’t be successful unless it’s something you really want.
I’ve had many people encourage me to make healthier choices
but I was always resistant to them because even though my brain knew I needed
to make changes, my heart wasn’t in it yet.
I hope that makes sense. I don’t
know what changed in my heart, and I honestly don’t know what my over all
motivation is, I just had something click one day that hey it’s now or
never.
Just about the time that my heart and brain clicked together
I met my dietician. The ward I was
living in split, and due to the split and reorganization of boundaries she
ended up in my ward and did a relief society activity about healthy foods. I was really interested in learning more and
talking to her but I was too shy so I didn’t say anything that night. I can’t remember if it was the next day, or
the day after but I got an email from my sister in law about a member of the
church who is a dietician who was looking for new clients, turns out it was the
same person in my ward. This got me
thinking about it more and more and I mentioned it to my mom and we decided
that together we would meet with her and see what we thought.
I was nervous about meeting with a dietician because like I
mentioned in my last post I’ve been on a million diets and due to that I have
had experiences of sitting down with a nutritionist and they would just hand me
a sheet of foods to eat, that more often than not were foods I didn’t like; and
then they would mostly just criticize what I had eaten the last week.
I wasn’t interested
in something like that. I’m not sure what other dieticians are like but
Elizabeth is nothing like that at all. She sat down with us and asked what we
wanted out of the experience and what we would like to learn. So far she has given us some amazing recipes,
meal plans, helped us walk through a grocery store and find healthy foods, and
tonight we even cooked veggies together.
I feel much more confidant when it comes to preparing
healthy meals and making better choices.
That doesn’t mean I do it all the time, and I’m still struggling with
the idea of planning ahead for potential “danger” situations where I may be out
and about and get hungry, but hey Rome wasn’t built in a day right.
Something else I have found helpful, like I mentioned she
gave me a meal plan but it isn’t a strict Monday you eat this, she just gave me
a list of break fast ideas, snack, lunch etc. So what I do once a week I sit
down and I plan out my entire week of meals.
I then make sure I have everything to make those meals, and I even have
started coming up with back up plans when I’m making new meals in case I end up
not liking them. This is huge, I don’t
always stick to the plan 100% but because I have this plan, and I then pin it
to my refrigerator I never wonder what I’m going to make for dinner, I always
know and I have a plan. I think this is
key so I don’t end up in a situation where I have no idea what to do so I just
go out to eat instead.
So anyways those are a few of the things I’ve done to change
my relationship with food. It’s a long
journey, and I’m just at the very beginning.
But what I love about it is I’m learning to not be overly critical of
myself when I do stumble, or when my plans don’t turn out exactly how I planned
them.
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