90 Days (and the rest of my life) to go ... (Part One)

One week ago today I started a new journey.

Well ... OK, not new. I've STARTED this journey before.

I've just never crossed the finish line.

The first time I started this journey, I was sittin pretty and headed for victory.  And then I crashed and burned.

The second time, I barely made it out of the starting gate before I crashed ...

But not this time. This time I'm takin y'all with me, so I can stay on course.

And, after all I have learned the last two times, I am beginning to understand that this 90 day journey, is really gonna be a lifetime trek.

So, here is a little background, just so you won't be lost...

I have an ongoing battle with myself. I have always struggled with low self esteem and it has allowed me to defeat myself more times than I care to count. My biggest area of continual struggle is my body image ... which, as it turns out, is also my biggest area of self sabotage.

Late last spring I came upon a workout called the Bikini Body Mommy 90 day challenge, which I found very intriguing.  I began talking to some women about it in a facebook group that I am in and started seeing some before/after pics.  WOW. I started to wonder if this might work for me.

About that time I was in the bathroom early one morning feeling pretty down on myself because "this" (whatever "this" was at the time) wasn't working either. After nearly a year of focused efforts, I had lost a few pounds but ZERO inches. The scale had stopped moving and my clothes were still tight. I was in tears when my 5 year old baby girl walked in, found me crying on the scale and said to me "mama, it's ok. I love you even if you're fat".

And, I realized what I was teaching her was absolutely EVERYTHING I had tried NOT to teach my girls.

And I started thinking that I needed to find a way to get healthy, not skinny.

Healthy.

So, on June 1st I started the BBM challenge with two of my friends.  Within a week I started feeling better physically - more energy, not so sluggish, etc.  Two weeks in, on a cardio day, I was running down the road and felt my pants falling off. I LITERALLY had to run with one hand holding my pants up.

It. Was. Awesome.

By day 30 I had lost 18.5 inches!  Only 3 pounds, but EIGHTEEN stinkin inches!  People were starting to notice and say sweet things to me and I was feeling SO empowered. SO strong. SO good. But then that voice of doom and self defeat kicked in, while we were on vacation, and kept telling me "ya KNOW you're just going to gain it all back - you always do - so why not just eat and enjoy yourself?"

I fought that voice back ... kinda.

But there was another voice this time. The one that said "Look how good you're doing! You can afford to splurge now! And, you KNOW if you don't splurge a little, you are gonna fall on your face, so just have a cookie!"  And THAT voice was harder to deny.  And that ONE cookie was hard to resist.  And so were the ONE MORE cookies after it.

So, when the loss started to stall - cause of all the dadgum cookies - the first voice got louder and I fell completely off the wagon at about day 70.  And I felt like SUCH a failure ... again.

Round two was ...........

***to be continued***