I took dance lessons throughout my childhood. I was very active, ate anything I wanted. Weight wasn’t a problem for me. As I remember it, my mom was on a diet during my entire life. She was only about 4’10” and at most weighed 115lbs, maybe 120lbs. We always had chips and candy in the house. I had a lot of family and our house was the place to be. We would get M&Ms and mom would actually count out 10 for each person to make sure it was fair.
In my early 20s I was no longer dancing and noticed a small amount of weight gain. I didn’t realize at the time, the path that I was headed. I had no idea that someday my heaviest weight would be 234lbs and I would struggle walking to the kitchen. I had no idea, THAT was my future
During my first pregnancy I gained about 54lbs. I expected that I would lose it all and be were I was before pregnancy. That didn’t happen, at the time I still didn’t realize the path that I was headed. With my 2nd pregnancy I gained, but not too much. With my 3rd, at first I didn’t gain at all, in fact I lost some weight. The doctors told me that I should have ice cream milk shakes because I needed to start gaining weight. This sounded like a fantastic idea. FINALLY, a doctor telling me to eat like crap. It worked. I gained weight. I didn’t gain a lot of weight, but I did gain and my son was health. I continued to eat anything and everything that I wanted.
It also didn’t help that my husband understood how to cook and bake and change recipes to make them exactly how you want them to be. As odd as it sounds, my mom make everything from a box or can. She made fried chicken often. She make beef stew, tacos and meatloaf. she made porkchops and steak, both fried with salt and pepper. she made tollhouse cookies and cake from a box. She didn’t experiment. She didn’t try anything knew. I don’t think she even owned a cookbook. My husband introduced me to a knew way to cook. He introduced me to steak with BBQ sauce. He showed me that there were other deserts to make that didn’t involve a box. He introduced me to tons of cookbooks and reminded me that you didn’t actually have to stick to the recipe. You could make it any way that you wanted. At the time, I loved to bake but rarely ate what I baked. I made brownies, cookies and cake and took it all Joe’s parents. We lived on the same property, it was quick and easy and the food didn’t go to waste. I know now that I wasn’t doing her any favors, at the time, I didn’t realize it.
Advance thirty years and 100lbs; all the regrets, epiphanies, and should-a, could-a’s come rushing to the mind like a ton of brinks. I can’t live in the past. I can’t live in regret. I can however, learn from the past, let it going and move forward with the life that I have. That is where God comes in. This is one of those things that I don’t know how to explain, it just is. I don’t know where I would be without God. I can tell you that I would be an unhappy miserable wreck.