Time to Regain What I've Lost....

So here I am. You can probably already tell that from the title of this post what this blog is going to be about. Some months ago I started this blog and was more determined than ever to become healthier and make some lasting changes in my life. I started exercising more and really started paying attention to what I ate and how much I was eating. For the first couple of weeks things were going great! I felt amazing after every workout and was so proud of myself for making better food choices. However, I once again fell of the bandwagon. I slipped right back into my old habits and quickly lost interest in exercising. Now, the exercise DVDs are starting to collect dust and there is no longer fresh fruit and yogurt in  my fridge. They have been replaced with Ghost Adventures season DVDs and junk food. Of course I also got busy with things in my  life. I still work full-time and sometimes overtime at my regular job, but I also became the personal photographer for an artist out of Boston Mass. Now I am constantly driving back and forth to Boston. It's a two hour drive each way which is no big deal really, but as you can guess if I got hungry while on the road it was easiest to swing through a drive through. When staying in Boston overnight it wasn't about bringing healthy foods with to keep in my mini fridge in my room, it was what restaurant am I going to eat at tonight? For anyone who lives or frequents Boston you know there is plenty of choices. I simply seemed to forget about living healthy.

Now here I am, I can tell I have put on weight simply by the way my clothes are fitting. I don't need to get on a scale to know this. I was recently caught in some pictures with my god-daughters while playing with them one day. I was appalled at how I looked in these photos. I am posting one here, just to show. It's time that I stop hiding these photos. I need to stop being a ashamed of them and start using them as motivation to make some lasting permanent changes in my life.

The photo to the right was taken just a few weeks ago. I cannot even begin to tell you how I felt when I saw this and the rest of the photos taken that day.

How do I turn this around? How can I make lasting changes in my life to make me a healthier a person? How do I stick to this vision I have in my head? So many things have been smacking me in the face telling me that I need to do this, that it's coming down to not a matter of wanting to do it, but MUST do it. I have chronic lower back pain and hip pain. There are days when it is hard for me to get out of bed. I have x-rays, MRIs and even nerve conduction studies done to determine that there was no significant injury to my lower back. These all came back clear with the exception of the nerve study. I was and still am having numbness in my outer left leg. It was determined from the nerve study that my cutaneous nerve is most likely being pinched. This can be caused by a few different things. Pregnant women can experience this from their growing bellies pressing on this nerve. As you can probably guess if you are overweight and carry a lot of your excess weight in the abdominal region this too cannot also pinch that very nerve. That is what the doctor is fairly certain is happening to me. His advice: Lose weight. No kidding doc! You need a medical degree for that one? sheesh....

So here I am back at square one once again. Seems like I always find myself here so matter what I do. However, this time must and will be different. I need to make some serious changes in my life and stick to them! I have to be my own motivator and listen to what is in my heart and not what my head is telling me to do. I can make lasting improvements to my health and reap the rewards. No one ever said it was going to be easy, they just said at the end it would be worth it!