Loving Me

I have always been self-conscious about my weight. I was overweight in early elementary school and somehow I still feel like that chubby little girl inside. Fortunately, when I was in 5th grade I took it upon myself to lose the weight and I slimmed right down. We also moved from New Jersey to New York about a year after I became thin so I completely started over without people ever knowing that I was once fat. I never really broke free from feeling fat, despite the fresh start.

Throughout high school I was thin, even though I never felt that way. I look back on pictures of myself and wonder why I was ever insecure about my weight. I was never the kind of person who could eat anything and everything I wanted without gaining weight. I always had to be conscious of what foods I took in so I'm guessing that's why my weight was always on my mind.

When I got pregnant with Brooke I gained a lot of weight and when I look back at pictures, my face was SO FAT! It's hard to believe how big I got. Between Brooke and Adrienne I didn't really focus too much on my body because I knew that I would be wanting to get pregnant again relatively soon. After Adrienne was born, however, I dropped most of the baby weight and worked out faithfully. I had finally accepted my body type and I felt pretty decent about my figure.. Until, I unexpectedly got pregnant with Bailey.

Immediately after Bailey was born I was determined to get back to the "old me." Knowing that I would never have to "share" my body again kind of fuelled my motivation to work extra hard on my figure. When I came home from the hospital from delivering her I had automatically lost 27 pounds. Then, when she was just about 2 weeks old I joined Weight Watchers. My goal was to drop another 25 pounds. At the time, it didn't seem possible but week after week I pressed on. The WW plan was awesome and it was actually super easy to lose the weight... Fun, even! I'm only 3 pounds shy of that 25 pound goal and I finally just cancelled my WW subscription because I actually feel confidant enough to do it on my own now.

Here's the problem, though... Here I am, at a weight that I haven't been at in about 5 years and I feel absolutely NO different. My clothes are falling off, people are commenting on my weight loss (which embarrasses me every time!) and I've dropped at least 3 pants sizes. Still, when I look in the mirror I see the same Jillian that I saw 22 pounds ago. I always imagined how I would feel when I was this weight again. I thought that I would feel gorgeous. I thought that I would feel confident in my appearance and proud of the effort I put forth, but somehow I don't.

I'm supposed to be raising confident, secure women in this house, as a mother of three girls. How in the world am I supposed to do that when I don't even feel that way? I would be deeply saddened if my own insecurities about my body ever translated onto Brooke, Adrienne, or Bailey and I found out that they, too, had these feelings. I guess loving me has to come from within and not from what's on the exterior. We're living in a world that bases just about everything on beauty and how thin you are and it's so hard to depart from that in my own personal line of thinking.

I'm learning more and more on this weight loss journey that being a child of the KING is what really matters. Without that, any earthly achievement won't matter. It's okay to want to be thin and healthy but that needs to be secondary to being complete in who Christ wants me to be. My prayer is that I will become content in this imperfect body and focus more on the heart of the issue!