Ok, so yesterday I came to a realization. I’m chubby. I might even be fat. Ugh, fat. It hurts writing that. As if putting it down in words somehow materializes something that otherwise would not exist. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. My body is squishy regardless if I acknowledge it on this blog.
Now for someone who has seen me since I’ve pushed out my babies, this shouldn’t be news. If anything, confusing on how I have gone for over a year since the birth of my youngest son and I am only now just realizing that I am a chubby girl. But honestly, for the last year I am lived completely oblivious to this reality. My lack of awareness of my own body size is the result of many factors. But really, it can be boiled down to one single truth.
I suffer from a high self-esteem. Much like my mother, I live my life with complete confidence in myself. For the majority of my life, I have been blindly self-assured of who I am as an individual, appearance and all. And frankly, it has served me well. As a whole, I am almost always happy with my life because I am largely confident in my life choices. I’ve gotten job offers, made friends, found stylish clothes that fit. When I was single, I never had an issue getting a date. Overall, if I really wanted it, I would will it to happen.
So after having my baby boys, sure, many of my clothes still didn’t fit. But that didn’t mean I was chubby. My hips have shifted. Or I am not that far off from where I was (oh I am). Because in my head, I wasn’t overweight (oh I am). I was in complete denial.
This isn’t the first time my body imagine has not matched reality. When I went to college, as a quintessential overachiever, I gained 30 pounds.
Yet, I remained as confident as ever. I went through three full years of undergrad before I actually realized that I was chubby and needed to rethink my habits. I won’t forget the day it hit me. I was sitting in a class, talking to a girl who lived in my dorm who was friends with my roommate. She was telling me a story about someone. Or trying to see if I knew someone. That part of the story has faded. But the rest of our conversation, I can close my eyes and find myself sitting in that classroom. There were no desks, and the plastic chairs made a giant circle outlining the room. It was right before class as we made what I had amounted to nothing more than small talk. She began describing this girl she was talking about to me.
“She is a little bit of a bigger girl. You know, like you.”
Those words stung. In that moment, I wanted to cry and run out of the classroom. I replayed her words over and over in my head on my walk back to my room after class. I had to get them out of my head. So I joined Weight Watchers. lost the weight, and got myself down to 128 pounds. I was fit, healthy, and happy.
This time, she hasn’t been around to bring me back to reality. So I am not sure what happened to snap me out of it. But yesterday, I realized that maybe I was a bit farther away from my pre-baby weight than I’d like, and I need to kick it into gear if I want to feel confident in my skin by summer (and more importantly, my Italian vacation with my husband).
So I am embarking on the 8 week total body challenge on the Strive with Megan app. It includes a daily 22-28 minute workout and a meal plan. It’ll be tough. Mostly because Matt loves snacking and I love to be part of the party 😉 But I’ve done it before. So it’ll happen again.
We tried one of the meals from the 8 week meal plan, and it was delicious! I tweaked it a bit to make it our own, including adding rice because otherwise Matt would have claimed there was just not enough food. It was simple to make, and the ingredients are mostly items that you would find in your kitchen on any day. Matt put this on his: make again list.
[ps: I don’t plan to share other variations of the meals from the Strive app but I encourage you to get the app yourself!]
