Step away from the sweatpants, and no one gets hurt.

First of all, welcome all one of you (Hi Mom)! So, I'm Courtney, I have 2 kidlets (Jackson is 3, Eliza is 1) and I have been married to my husband Kurt for 5 years now. This may be one of eleventybillion blogs about moms and fitness out there, but let me break it down to you why I'm doing this.

I'm a stay-at-home mom who gained a ginormous 50+ lbs in my first pregnancy, hated myself for 2 years while losing about 30 of it, got pregnant again, stayed super healthy to a point of never giving into cravings and exercising all the time... still gained 43 lbs. That felt like the ultimate failure to me. Here I am trying to stay healthy, doing everything right and I still gained a lot on a frame I wasn't happy with in the first place. Neither one of my children took to nursing, and I wanted to punch every person in the face that said "You should really breastfeed. It burns like 500 cals a day". People can make light of "baby weight" saying you'll lose it eventually, but at a certain point you find yourself with kids who are far from newborns and you still have the weight. This can seriously screw with your psyche, adding guilt about even thinking about yourself because we think we should focus all our energy on these new tiny people. Add sleep deprivation, stress of a completely different life, blah blah, we've all been there.

And there I was, not knowing what to do, or where to start. I always thought I was a fairly healthy eater and went to the gym semi-regularly before kids. But I had never been in a size 16 body, and I felt like it wasn't really mine. I didn't want to look in the mirrors, avoiding them except for the 5-10 mins I would take on my makeup and hair a day. I stopped taking any time on myself, even if I did have a spare few minutes during overlapping naps. I lived in my 2 to 3 pairs of sweatpants and baggy shirts, not wanting to buy clothes unless there was an occasion I HAD to attend that did not include cotton lounge wear. We're talking someone had to die or get married occasion. Every time I thought about all this, I'd be racked with guilt for feeling sorry for myself when I was "suppose" to be worrying about my children and their lives. So stuck in this vicious cycle, dangerously close to some serious depression, I had to do SOMETHING.

So I did. And that is what I will be writing about for the most part. I went from a size 16 at my heaviest, to a 8 where I am now. I've lost probably 55 lbs total in this yo-yo coaster so far. It's still a journey for me, but I wanted to write it down for myself and hopefully for others to be inspired. I will tell you my own stories, share exercises that work into the mom at home lifestyle, give menu ideas and recipes I've found or created, but most of all hope to get you all involved. In this day and age, there seems to be no community foundation for encouragement and support. Everyone keeps to themselves and gone are the days of the neighborhood mentality. Sometimes it takes a village, and if you can't physically have that, I hope to facilitate that here. So I hope you come back and I look forward to chatting! I have to warn you though... I'm a smartass and have a little bit of a mouth, so I should just apologize ahead of time ;).

Before (MY EYES! OH GOD MY EYES!)


After (In Progress)