To thine own self be true. (Warning, it's a long one!)

Naturally, I couldn't get to sleep last night over all the thoughts and ideas now that I have taken this step... So why not get started this morning?

First, let's take a super-mega-reader's-digest-fast-flashback so we are all up to speed...

   A few months leading into June of 2010 is when I finally hit a point that I was no longer content just being lazy and tired and fat. Something finally snapped in me and I decided it was time to do something. I went through a severely painful divorce, a string of disgusting dating situations, and a few that really were not bad at all. Just nothing seemed to fit the way I wanted it to. I got fed up and decided if I was going to be alone for the rest of my life, (which oddly used to be among my biggest fears), well dammit I was going to make this life something I would be happy with.
  I started making changes; I quit smoking, quit drinking soda, stopped eating like I was going to live forever and started getting smart about what I was putting in my body. I saw small changes initially and it was enough to keep me motivated. I met my now fiance a few months earlier and he taught me what he learned regarding nutrition and weight training and exercising, and it was like lightning hit me. Everything finally clicked and made sense. I joined his gym and we worked out like fiends over that summer, and I lost 50 pounds in the blink of an eye. My body changed, I could SEE the changing shape of my body, and feel the strength and stamina building. It was incredible. Then, Murphy's law, I got hurt. Cracked a rib. I was devastated. Anything that increased my heart rate made my chest hurt so working out wasn't really possible. (In retrospect, I probably could have just walked casually on the treadmill at least to get my blood pumping, but that's neither here nor there lol.) 6 weeks later, we hit the gym and it was a little rough but I felt like I was back on my feet. It was a start. The first workout in weeks was followed by a night out with friends I hadn't seen since I started this whole adventure, so it was really exciting to show off my new bod. One of my friends was so excited he picked me up and hugged me. In doing so, he re-cracked the first rib, and injured a second one. It was funny and exciting (Hello, someone actually picked me up!?!), and frustrating at the same time. I was down for another 9 weeks, and truth be told, never really regained my footing.
It was holiday time, my favorite, so I took advantage and made excuses and just never really attacked with the same fire that I did that first summer.
   Fast forward to the following summer, and the (then) boyfriend and I were making plans to get an apartment together. July 2011 we moved in to our first place. It seemed that it would be so perfect for us. Right down the road from a branch of our gym, a great place, beautiful area of town. Close to everything we need. And for some reason, we just could not find any kind of consistency to get to the gym like we planned.
The year went on like this, struggling back and forth between school, work, gym, and us time. I gained and lost the same 10 pounds for the entire year. Kind of bittersweet. I know I'm doing something right because I didn't gain more, but frustrating to be so close and not make any progress.
  We talk things out often to refocus and reinvent ourselves to stay positive. A few weeks ago, we made a huge discovery. When we saw such results that first summer, we were going to the gym at night, like clock work. Here, we were trying to go at 5 in the morning and it just was not working. We decided to revisit that idea and see where it took us. I have to admit, while we do still struggle with motivation sometimes, I do feel a bit of that fire again. I am excited to keep at it and am already seeing progress.

So, that roughly brings us to date...

 At my heaviest, I started at 385. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more, but I wasn't exactly in love with scales in those days. Stress and depression helped me drop to 350, and then I started actively making the changes, and have been stuck between 300-310 for the last year... until we just recently changed things up. I have been under 300 for about two weeks now. For whatever reason, 300 has been my biggest milestone yet. That was a hard one to beat. From now on, everything is a milestone, as I haven't been this small since before I graduated high school.

Another discovery that I made in myself is the reason for the title of today's post.
My biggest hurdles in this voyage have been my lack of consistency, and my lack of accountability. I have been using the MyFitnessPal app (which will now be referred to as MFP) to track my calories in and out, and I absolutely love it. I have trouble sometimes calculating portions when I enter new recipes, but I really adore it. It is so easy for me to use. But I noticed that on days that I cheated, I didn't enter anything, but instead left the whole day blank. It was like if I didn't input it, it didn't happen. Well, unfortunately, my scale doesn't work that way... and neither do my booty jeans!

I came to this revolutionary conclusion that... I'm a grown ass woman and I will eat what I want when I truly want it, and I will be grown up enough to take responsibility for it, and put it in my tracker. Even more so, I made my tracker public so any of my friends can check out my diary. And it has been completely liberating. I eat whatever the hell I want, and track it, and find that I'm not even exceeding my caloric goal for the day because I know exactly where I stand. Even though I'm lovingly chained to MFP, I feel so free. I don't hide anything; if a day is blank now, it's because I'm fighting that consistency, not because I ate something bad. I'm honest with myself, and in the end, I feel like that is one of the biggest gifts from this trip. For so many years I lied to myself about everything. Now I'm free of all of it. I know where I have a need for improvement, but I'm not forgetting where I've been. And so that is my message to you.

Be true to yourself. Love yourself. Regardless. <3