The time is now!

TooFatToFit

Hello everyone....I've read a bit and it seems like a really friendly place, so I'm just going to push my shy habits to the side and jump in.

I'm a 35 year old mother of 2, and very unhappy with the way I've been living my life. I'm going to change it. I was raised in a very sedentary family and no one ever worried about eating healthy (except when my mother was yo-yo dieting, which I refuse to do). For my children, I want to break that cycle and show them a better way. I find it a pretty tough struggle because not only was I raised sedentary, but my own nature is just very sedentary...my favourite hobbies are reading, cross-stitching, the internet...so I'm constantly at battle with myself to get up and get moving. I've also never been that great around the kitchen so convenience food and fast food has been way too big a part of our diet for too long. Even if cooking isn't second nature to me, I am pretty good at following a recipe so I have no excuse for wimping out all the time.

I started really getting serious about this in my earlier 30's but I was so stuck in a rut...stay-at-home-mom with young kids who felt like there wasn't really much I could do at toddler pace to change things. My marriage wasn't going very well and my husband wanted me to be a supermodel, but the quick way through a juice diet or something instead of the slow, healthy way I wanted to. I felt very held back because I was trying to work active, healthy living into our family and he wasn't on board. When he decided to leave us in December '09 I was devastated...but also set free! Now the kids and I do all those things I wanted to do as a family and we still fall into old habits, but I'm proud of our accomplishments...as a family we now geocache (AWESOME family activity) and have started cross country skiing. Fat or not, I get on my suit and go swimming with them. We've had a great summer but now that they're back to school I'm on a mission of self improvement.

Obviously, being a single stay-at-home mom doesn't support your family, and as I've learned in the last 21 months, neither does minimum wage. So I'm also starting school (October 10th) and that's part of my self makeover. The schedule is such that I can also get to the gym without needing a sitter and making weekly meal plans are keeping us out of McDonalds. I'm trying to plan for my success and I think MFP will help a lot, especially the iPhone app because then I have no excuse for not logging my calories. I've been logging for almost a week and I've already learned I was wrong about a LOT of things and I'm learning the right choices to make about food.

Sorry for that being so long, but I'm rather excited about what the future can hold for me. I think I'll need the support (and peer pressure) to keep my enthusiasm going. I have such a strong hibernation instinct during the winter. lol