June

I really only have one reason to have a new post right now - I said I would once a month. My commitment to staying away from the scale stands. There's not much interesting going on there.

So I've racked my brain for thoughts I've had this month about body image. I actually had a conversation about my body image with a friend via Facebook Messenger - which is convenient, because now I can quote it back to you word for word:

"I'm actually pretty self conscious about how I look quite often, and actually more so since I've become so vocal about my diet. I don't want anyone blaming the diet for how I look, or claiming that it's not working. 1: acne. It's there, and I worry that people see it. I think I mentioned it seems worse if I eat fattier foods, so maybe I can hope it disappears in the future. 2: I'm really not THAT thin. I worry that people think I should be thinner if I'm really eating right. 3: I quit wearing makeup only recently. This is a mark of my growing confidence in myself, but also I worry that people think I SHOULD wear makeup.
"As for how I FEEL, I'm amazing. I feel amazing most of the time. In the last six months I've slowly developed a routine where I rotate between running and yoga each morning, and this makes me feel even better. Yes, I can do everything I want. The eating though? I often eat too much. Even on this diet, I've been known to unbutton my pants at the end of dinner. Which is what I'm working the hardest at! Pregnancy makes it harder to master this. . . Every time I get the portions down, I get pregnant and it's harder to feel my stomach underneath the baby. Hunger is so demanding, and I'm really good at not eating the foods my body doesn't crave [I mean, crave nutritionally - I can tell what my body NEEDS and doesn't NEED when I'm pregnant], even if I'm hungry and nothing better is around, but the boundaries are different. It's hard to get good habits back in place after pregnancy, especially since newly-breastfeeding hunger is almost worse than pregnancy hunger. And I have a history of starvation-binge dieting from when I was a teenager. . . [All my past habits] work against my natural ability to stop eating when I'm full."All I can say is, I'm working on it!"

So that's how I feel. I AM constantly hoping that I will lose another ten pounds, but I no longer count on that.

My husband DID say earlier this week that he thought I might be smaller in the back area [ahem], but I wasn't convinced that was true, and all my clothes fit the same (except a brand new pair of capris that I should have tried on before checking out at Walmart - I just ASSUMED that a size 8 would fit, because size 8 ALWAYS fits. Unfortunately they fit like a loose size 10, but it wasn't worth the effort of returning them, so I've been doing a lot of tugging up, and dug out a belt that I haven't worn in two years).

What was my brilliant response to my husband's comment? "Well, that's not where I need to lose it." I think all of us women have a fixation on having a flat tummy with no rolls, right? Good thing my husband doesn't care about either! He wasn't intending to give a compliment, it was more like he was commenting on the weather.

Anyway, I'll plan on having another update next month. If at some point I run out of material to talk about, I'll mention that I'm going to cut back on posts. But we only have six more months! I'm pretty confident that I'm going to succeed.