Lauren's journal of fitness and everything else!

[heidismommy]

I've had a couple journals here already, but I abandoned my last one knowing that at some point I'd like to start a fresh one. It has just taken me a lot longer than I'd anticipated to actually create a new one, but here it goes.

I'm Lauren, a 34-year-old mom of 2 little girls---a 9-year-old and a 2-year-old. I'm a stay-at-home mom, but do babysitting on the side in order to contribute to our family's income. I don't make much and my job can be difficult and frustrating, but it's also extremely rewarding and I adore the kids I watch during the week. I've been married to a wonderfully supportive man for the past 10 years, I consider myself very lucky to have such an amazing family. We're 100% done having kids and I'm content with that. I'm having fun watching our girls grow and change and savoring every moment, it just goes by too fast, they grow so quickly. It's all so bittersweet.

I got my start with fitness in 2008. I had relapsed pretty badly into anorexia and was trying to find a way to get out of the cycle in which I'd become trapped. I was seeing a therapist at the time and was on meds and in a matter of months I'd gained from 80 lbs to mid-upper 80's. I was feeling really discontent with the gain and was feeling very relapse-y. I thought that maybe if I gained some "tone" I'd feel better about myself so I pulled out a workout routine from my magazine and dusted off an old pair of dumbbells that had been in my closet and had never been used. I started doing my "program" regularly. It wasn't much, the dumbbells were light, but I felt good to be doing something like that for myself. Over time I progressed from the pull-out magazine workout to videos. First it was Gilad, then Cathe Friedrich. I bought progressively heavier dumbbells, and then a barbel set with extra plates plus a stability ball. Something magical happened and that is that the more I focused on working out, the less I felt the need to maintain a very low weight and I very slowly gained weight. I reached upper 90's in weight and was able to maintain that for a long time. Slowly over time my body changed and I felt good about myself. It felt good being able to eat and not feel guilty. I never would have imagined I'd be able to do that, not after my eating disorder history.

I was first diagnosed with anorexia at age 14 and spent most of high school and college in and out of treatment programs. My longest stay in any program was 4 months at age 16, at which time I'd put on nearly 40 lbs (from 67 lbs to 105 lbs). It wasn't until I hit my late teens and early 20's that I even wanted to get better. I have a long history of clinical depression that reaches way back, much further than the eating disorder, and the eating disorder became a way of coping with life. It started with restriction and eventually led to the binge-purge subtype of anorexia, then back to restriction (etc). My last hospitalization was at age 21 and it was not long after that hospitalization that I started dating the man who is now my husband. I did great for a while, we got married a couple years after that, then decided to have a baby almost right away. Not long after my first daughter was born, I'd dropped back down to the mid-70's in weight. I blamed the fact I was breastfeeding, but the truth was that something had triggered the eating disorder and I couldn't admit that even to myself at the time. I started therapy and a year after that, I was back up to about 105 lbs. A long, slow decent occurred after that and I reached 80 lbs by the time my older daughter turned 3. It was at that time I was just sick and tired of being so ill and really wanted to get better so I started in treatment.

I had been weight stabilized and recovered for a while when I got pregnant with baby number 2 (and was really into weightlifting by then and had designed my own program). I had lost some ground in the pregnancy, but it was worth it because a beautiful baby was what came from it. It didn't take nearly as long as I'd thought to start gaining some of that muscle back and lose some of that fat, though I'm still not quite where I was pre-pregnancy as far as leanness, but I think that may be a good thing. I'm still very defined, but I'm not nearly as etched and my lines aren't as "sharp". But I was also obsessed with working out and cardio and did insane amounts of it (though my eating was better than it had ever been).

So here I am now, 2 years after baby number 2. I've been doing an upper/lower split 4 times per week for the past 1.5 years, doing a routine I made up. That isn't recommended and if I ever decide to compete I'll follow a coach's plan, but for now I'm stubborn and like doing things my way. My workout routine had gotten stale so I've decided to split it up slightly differently. If it doesn't work out I'll go back to my old split, but I'd like to give it a try for the next month. If nothing else, it's a nice mental break for me. My new split has me working 4 days on, one day of, then repeat. I workout from home and recently got a new piece of equipment that I'm excited about. I don't know how to describe it, but it's like a standing pull-up rack, but it allows me to do various other things with it. That along with my other equipment (lots of dumbbells, barbel set, ball) will keep me going for a while, I use my bed to load the barbel on my shoulder for squats and stuff. Eventually I'll join a gym, but I don't want to commit the money right now, finances are a little tight for a monthly monetary commitment.

I'm now at the highest number on the scale I've ever been. Last summer I'd gotten down to about 100 lbs, so I can't blame baby weight, lol. It was kind of an unintentional bulk, related to the fact that my toddlers nursing habits are crazy. Some days she spends a lot of time at the breast, some days very little. My body doesn't know what to do, I think it's confused and my appetite is crazy. She still doesn't sleep through the night, she gets up to nurse, but she sleeps next to me so it isn't so bad. I would like to night-wean her soon, we'll see. I'm actually okay with the number on the scale, especially since my body is still looking fairly lean/defined. Therefore I know I've gained some muscle in the process. In fact, I'm so okay that I'd continue to gain a little more, up to about 110 or so, but it's almost summer here and I don't want to go into summer fluffy. I haven't decided whether just to maintain or drop a bit, just to bring out a bit more definition. My husband doesn't want me to lose anything, but we'll see. If I do drop a bit, definitely I would not go lower than 100 or so and then would bring it back up once the cooler weather starts again.

My diet is all over the place. I make sure that I get plenty of protein and eat some healthy stuff for health, but I will never buy into the "clean" eating thing. It just doesn't work for me, moderation is so much better. Healthy whole foods are important for physical health, but my mental health suffer if I get rigid with that sort of stuff so I have had to work to find balance. I eat lots of good stuff, but I don't avoid junk. I like my oats, fruit, veggies, protein pancakes, greek yogurt, and lean meats, but I also like my frappuccinos, ice cream, pizza, and burgers. When bulking and even just maintaining it is super easy to fit in just about anything I want into my diet. When I do diet down a bit it'll be a bit harder, but still doable (just maybe not on a super regular basis).

Gosh, this first post was super long. I'm going to try to update this thing most days of the week and I'd like to actually write a lot more than I did in my prior journal. It is good getting everything out.

ETA: One more thing---we had our first spring-like day a few days ago and I got to wear shorts and I t-shirt for the first time this season. I had to stop by trader joe's to get a few things and on the way to the checklanes, a young male cashier asked me "whoa, are you an athlete, like a runner or something?". I told him that no, I lift weights for fun. He looked at me perplexed and said, "wow, well that is cool". He then asked me about some of my lifts and stuff and we talked a bit about that. He said he used to lift weights, but stopped because he hated it. Anyway, I left the store beaming from ear-to-ear. It's neat that I really truly do "look" as fit as I feel.

[PrayLiftEat]

I love this. You are so inspirational I can relate to you ED-wise, so I genuinely know someof those feelings you had to endure.
I think you look AWESOME. Like seriously, you have the body I want my body to look like! AWESOME progress!!! I will continue to check out this journal of yours.
To build muscle how many calories did you find yourself eating, or did/do you count?

[heidismommy]

I love this. You are so inspirational I can relate to you ED-wise, so I genuinely know someof those feelings you had to endure.
I think you look AWESOME. Like seriously, you have the body I want my body to look like! AWESOME progress!!! I will continue to check out this journal of yours.
To build muscle how many calories did you find yourself eating, or did/do you count?

Thank you so much! I'm sorry that you've had similar experiences and can relate, eating disorders suck so much and I hate that so many suffer/have suffered with it. I appreciate the awesome compliment btw . Gosh, I'm not sure, but I'd guess my intake has always been quite high. It varies by the day, but if I had to guess my average intake is probably at least 2500 cals with lifting and minimal cardio (but still breastfeeding). I could be way off though, don't quote me on that estimate lol.

[LeanFit50]

Thank you for such a wonderful share. You have been inspiring me for a long time.

You look fabulous at your current weight. I'm so glad you are comfortable with the number.

Could you share where you buy your bikinis ~ I love the ruffles! PM me if you prefer.

[PrayLiftEat]

Wow, it is so refreshing to see other women (and people in general!) who actually fuel their bodies right! Specially after all you have been through. I eat a lot more than so many people on here, even at the same stats, it just goes to show we all are different and have different needs
And yes where are your bikinis from? They are adorable.

[heidismommy]

Thank you for such a wonderful share. You have been inspiring me for a long time.

You look fabulous at your current weight. I'm so glad you are comfortable with the number.

Could you share where you buy your bikinis ~ I love the ruffles! PM me if you prefer.

Thank you so much and it's good to see you here .

I don't mind saying, I get all of my bikinis from either Target or Victorias Secret. The 2 bikinis in most recent photos are from VS.

Wow, it is so refreshing to see other women (and people in general!) who actually fuel their bodies right! Specially after all you have been through. I eat a lot more than so many people on here, even at the same stats, it just goes to show we all are different and have different needs
And yes where are your bikinis from? They are adorable.

It took quite a while to learn to trust my body. I spent so much of my life terrified of certain foods and wanting to keep my weight and calories as low as possible so it was so hard to break away from that, but it felt so good when I did.

Thank you . Victorias Secret and Target are where all my bikinis are from.

[heidismommy]

Astrid, my baby girl, is finally really starting to talk. A few months ago we had really been worried about her speech development because she still didn't really have many words. My husband and I discussed possibly having her evaluated if she didn't start talking by age 2. Luckily just a few weeks after her 2nd birthday her language really exploded and she has quite a lot of words. Some aren't quite clear. *I* know what she is saying, but strangers might have a hard time interpreting some of her speech right now, but she has made such great progress in such a short time that I'm no longer worried. She is even starting to string words together. She'll say "all done" and "the end" along with many other really short phrases. I had never suspected she had autism or anything because her socialization has always been just fine (loves touch and loves to be held, makes eye contact, has gestures, plays with peers, etc). I just had a concern about her speech only and it is amazing to hear each and every word that she says!

Heidi, my older daughter, is in 3rd grade. She is super bright, took a test for the advanced program at her school and not only did she pass it, but blew it out of the water. That means she will be starting advanced program in the fall. She is certainly capable and I think the challenge will be good for her, I just worry that she'll get frustrated that it won't be as easy as things have been. She is a perfectionist and doesn't like to miss anything. I figure she needs the chance though, I can always pull her out of the program if it gets to be too much for her. She really wants to be in the program too.

This is my littlest one

This is my big girl

[heidismommy]

Before and now pictures

Before, weighing about 80 lbs:

[heidismommy]

And now!

[heidismommy]

My week of babysitting has come to an end, I have the next 4 days off and I need the rest in order to kick this cold I've developed. I'm actually starting to feel better, but I miss feeling 100%. I actually picked up this cold from the girls I watch, the older one is in a "parents day out" program and she is always coming over with some sort of illness (or so it seems). I had been babysitting my nephew on Tuesdays and Fridays, but my sister lost her job about a month ago and is having a hard time finding something that meets her pay requirements. Once she goes back to work, I will likely start babysitting him again.

It got hot here today, it seems to have gone from winter to summer over the course of the past week. Storms expected tomorrow, then much cooler for a few days, before returning to more seasonable temperatures. I love my seasons.

[ms_mac]

I have to admit that looking at your before pics was.....heartbreaking, for lack of a better word. You have come along way from that point. Keep on keepin' on! You are doing great now

[heidismommy]

I have to admit that looking at your before pics was.....heartbreaking, for lack of a better word. You have come along way from that point. Keep on keepin' on! You are doing great now

I know, sometimes I forget that I was ever sick since I've been doing well for so long. These are a good reminder to make sure not to get complacet. Yes, things have been going beautifully for a while, but I could slip if I'm not careful. I feel so far removed from the disorder that I really don't think I'd ever relapse again. I know my triggers and such and have devoloped better coping mechanisms. Still, I need to be careful. The before pictures are also a good reminder to myself how far I've come. Thank you so much btw!

[heidismommy]

Other than my throat, I'm feeling better. My throat is feeling worse than ever though so I've been taking pain relievers to take the edge off. Astrid woke up with pinkeye, yuck, we're just a mess today. I haven't worked out is several days, I was hoping to get back to it today, but I'll have to see if I'm feeling up to it later. I'd rather take off an extra day or two to make sure I'm well rather than going back too soon and risk taking a turn for the worse. So glad spring is here and cold/flu season is coming to an end.

[malamujer]

You're an inspiration. I hope you feel better.

[heidismommy]

I appreciate that, thank you so much !

[heidismommy]

Stopped mid-workout to snap these, I'm really liking the shape of my hamstrings. I've always heard that athletic figures look awful in skinny jeans, but I like wearing skinny jeans, I think they look just fine on me. I like things that show off my curves, I've worked hard at building them up.

Today was my first day back to working out after having taken almost a week off due to illness. I need to start taking a multivitamin, but I need to find a chewable vitamin, I cannot swallow the big vitamin pills. More thoughts to come, I'm on my ipad, can type out more thoughts later....

Eta: photos are low resolution, taken with ipad 2 and the camera quality is crummy, but it'll do for now.

[heidismommy]

I think a big part of the reason I have a hard time swallowing most pills is psychological as a result of something that happened when I was 13 years old. At 13, I was struggling with depression and wanted to end my life so I took an entire bottle of my tricyclic antidepressant (pamilor) and ended up in intensive care on a ventilator. I was released to a psych unit after several days, then pulled the same stunt upon my discharge. Lucky for me, my psychiatrist wasn't stupid enough to prescribe something quite so...potentially toxic, so my second overdose wasn't as life-threatening. I still ended up on a medical unit. All this happened about a year or so before I was diagnosed anorexic and once I'd become entrenched in the eating disorder, I no longer had the urges to end things. The underlying depression was still there, but I had developed a way to cope (albeit a really bad one).

Gosh, it terrifies me to think Heidi is only 4 years younger than I was when the suicide attempts happened. Thankfully Heidi is a much happier kid than I was. She does well in school, she has lots of friends, and she seems to love life. By the time I was her age, I was already making weekly trips to the councelor's office. I was very shy, had major anxiety, and was withdrawn. Heidi has none of that and for that I am so thankful!

One thing Heidi does have in common with me is perfectionism and her teacher has even expressed concern about that in her last parent-teacher conference. Apparently there was a big test one day at school and Heidi had gotten really upset because she didn't understand one of the questions, but the teacher was not allowed to help, not even to explain anything. At the end of the day, her teacher was grading the tests and realized one of them was missing. When she realized it was Heidi's, she looked in her desk and found the test. It was graded and even though Heidi missed that question, she still got a 103% (she did the bonus work). But instead of turning in the test and seeing what happened, she was so upset at missing that one question that she decided to hide it. Eric and I have discussed with her that it is okay to miss questions, that as long as she does the best she can and tries, that is all that matters. She is so hard on herself though and that worries me and makes me sad.

She is at risk for developing an eating disorder because of my history of anorexia as well as her personality. I do not want her to ever calorie count and I don't want her obsessing over the number on the scale. It is possible to be healthy and not calorie count, very possible in fact.

Anyway, enough rambling for now. Heidi is having a sleepover with a friend from school, the girls are in her room playing with Astrid at the moment so I had a bit of time to add a few thoughts.

[heidismommy]

Oh my goodness, dinner is in the crockpot and it smells amazing! Nothing special, it's a beef stew made with stew meat, golden potatoes, carrots, a sweet onion, and seasoning packet (mixed with water). We love our crockpot, everything cooks up so well and it's so easy to just throw random ingredients in the crockpot and then by dinner time everything is already ready. It is by far my favorite way to cook meat, everything just gets so tender.

I worked out this morning this morning which makes this day #3 of working out and it feels good to be back at it. I still have a bit of a lingering cold. Mostly I feel better, but I still have this annoying, nagging cough so I've been taking cough syrup. It's gone from a mostly productive cough to a dry one (constant tickle in my throat) so I don't feel bad about taking something to suppress it, especially since it impacts my ability to fall and stay asleep.

[ms_mac]

Glad you are feeling better. That stew sounds yummy. I use my crockpot all the time. I have even cooked a whole chicken in it before

[heidismommy]

Glad you are feeling better. That stew sounds yummy. I use my crockpot all the time. I have even cooked a whole chicken in it before

Thank you so much! That is a great idea to cook a whole chicken, might have to try that.

[heidismommy]

Using camera flash really changes the way things look. It washes out definition in some areas while emphasizing it in others.

[heidismommy]

I got in a great workout in this morning after having taken yesterday off. Intense and volume-heavy (I've always been obsessed with volume, need to get past that) it feels good to get my lifting in. Great way to start the day!

I have decided not to do anything specific with regards to weight this summer. I would like to not gain anymore, I'm about as soft as I'm comfortable being going into summer, but I'm also not going to try to lose anything either. My weight may drop as we move more into summer naturally, only because I'm a lot more active now that we have more daylight and it is much warmer. But I'm not going to deliberately restrict calories either, not this summer. By next summer I'm hoping Astrid will have self-weaned or will be close to it. I'm not worried about how diet will compromise supply---when my older daughter was 6 months old my weight dipped into the mid-70's and my supply was abundant. However, it will be easier to regulate things once things are more consistent with regards to feeding. Right now, as mentioned before, sometimes she nurses very little, while some days it's a ton. My body doesn't know what to do and my hormones are consistently crazy. So maintenance for now, but I won't be devastated if I drop a bit. Slight bulk next winter, similar to the one I'm coming off of. Then my first "real" cut next summer and hoping I will have some nice mass to show for it.

[heidismommy]

I had just out a dress on Astrid, my littlest one and she then indicated she needed a diaper (just turned 2, not ready for potty training quite yet). I told her that yes, she needs a diaper so she doesn't go pee pee on her dress, to which she responded "pee pee dress, poo poo dress, pee pee dress". Oh noes, lol! Then I needed to run some errands so I asked her if she wanted to go to target. She paused, then I asked if she'd rather go to trader joes. She shook her head and said she wanted to go to "ta tas". That is what she now calls target, she loves that store, as do I.

I spent forever in the checkout lanes, the guy working the registers was new and super slow. It took ages for him to scan each item and at the end there was a container of bubbles that was missing the barcode. Instead of flashing his light to get someone working front end to help him, he spent about 10 minutes trying to find a code. There were several people in line behind us by this time and he finally got someone over to help. So everything gets scanned, I hand him a cash payment, and I was supposed to get 45 cents back. Instead he hands me like $15 and change so I handed it back to him and told me that he gave too much. He looked at my receipt, then made the correction. I felt bad for him, could tell he was frazzled. It's hard being new and learning new things, I hope the poor guy gets the hang of things soon.

Let night was pretty nice, Eric had to work late shift so I met my sister over at my parents' house with our little ones and they cooked us "breakfast for dinner". It was very good, my dad made French toast, omelettes, and summer sausage. I really enjoyed the company too, had some nice conversations over dinner. My sister has recently gotten me hooked on the show The Walking Dead on AMC. I hadn't been interested because zombie stuff has just never done anything for me, it isn't anything I find scary. I wasn't even going to give it a chance, but being that it has gotten such great reviews, I decided to watch at least one show. Well, within a week, I have watched seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix and I have watched the first show of season 3 on iTunes. I love it and it is fun recapping past shows with her. She also got my hooked on American Horror Story, but I'm caught up with both seasons for that show.

[schnauzers]

I have to admit that looking at your before pics was.....heartbreaking, for lack of a better word. You have come along way from that point. Keep on keepin' on! You are doing great now

I was gonna say the same....but wow! you have come so far. So amazing!!!!! I would have reacted the same way the Trader Joe's guy did and girl you *should* grin from ear to ear. You legs and butt look amazing (as does the rest). I know it's not right to covet someone else's legs but can I has yours????

Can you share what type of lifting program you follow?

[heidismommy]

I was gonna say the same....but wow! you have come so far. So amazing!!!!! I would have reacted the same way the Trader Joe's guy did and girl you *should* grin from ear to ear. You legs and butt look amazing (as does the rest). I know it's not right to covet someone else's legs but can I has yours????

Can you share what type of lifting program you follow?

Oh wow, thank you so much ! A lady I know from years ago was working at the fitting rooms at Target. I went to try on some clothes and this lady was asking about the weather because there was a chance of storms. I told her the skies were dark, but no rain yet. She then said she needed to run...but then clarified "but not run like you do, just to my car". This happened just a couple days after the trader joes thing happened. It's kind of funny so many people assume I'm a runner, but I'm flattered just to look fit so runner works .

As far as workout program, I have made up my own. I have incorporated a lot of the lifts I learned from the videos I used to watch, mainly he Cathe Friedrich ones. For the past year or so I've been doing an upper/lower split 4 times per week, but recently switched to a push/legs/pull/legs split. It means more days per week, but less time and volume per day. I have 2 leg days in he split rotation because one emphasizes posterior with exercises such as good mornings and Romanian deadlifts while the other emphasizes anterior with squats, sissy squats, etc. my workouts were just too long and I was getting burnt out, so breaking down each workout a little more is refreshing. I've always been obsessed with supersetting too, I like to keep my heart rate high.

BTW, your profile pic is fantastic, your arms are amazing!

[heidismommy]

New profile picture^^

I think it would actually pretty easy to lose a little bit of the weight I've gained just by making simple changes---like eating 2 slices of pizza instead of 3, eating a green veggie with my burgers instead of fries or onion rings, and limiting alcohol to once or twice a week instead of nightly (I have a glass of red wine or a wine cooler almost every night). Even with my crazy appetite, I think it's doable even now. I think the issue is that right now it just isn't worth focusing on it, I'd rather wait until next summer when Astrid is a little older (and hopefully weaned). I actually really like the way my body looks, though I do admit that sometimes I really miss how lean I used to be. Not saying that I'm fat now by any means, just not quite as lean. That is okay for now. My weight usually drops a bit in the summer without trying because, as mentioned above, I tend to be more active. But for now I'm not going to focus on the food, though it is tempting at times to want to cut back...I am eating a lot!

Speaking of active, I got in a great pull workout and did some walking as well---about 3 miles solo, then a couple miles with the family this evening.

[heidismommy]

This weekend is now coming to an end, it was a nice one while it lasted. I got a good workout in this morning, then went to the park with the family. We let the girls run around for a while and play on the equipment before heading over to Culver's to get a bite to eat for lunch. Astrid fell asleep in the car on the way home so I put her to bed as soon as we got back to the apartment. I took Heidi along with me to run errands while Eric stayed home to watch Astrid. Not long after returning, I went on a long walk. S stayed very busy, but I didn't get as much accomplished as I would have liked, there just aren't enough hours in the day!

[heidismommy]

Aw man it's hot in here, I need to turn on the air conditioner. It has gotten a break the past few days as highs have topped out in the 50's and 60's, but it's going to get in the 70's today. Not really hot by any means, but because of the sun brightness and angle, as well as the fact we have a second story apartment, it seems hotter in here than that already. It's cooler out there than it is in here.

Today is going well so far, got in a push workout this morning and then the little girls I watch came over. All 3 girls are napping now, it's just a matter of time before one of them wakes up. I might take a walk this evening after dinner, before the rain (and another cold front) pushes back in tomorrow night.

[Cardioconvert]

Hi There

Where do you live? Sorry if you mentioned it somewhere in the journal but I haven't remembered if you did

I am just jelly of anyone getting warmer weather right now!

CC

[heidismommy]

Hi There

Where do you live? Sorry if you mentioned it somewhere in the journal but I haven't remembered if you did

I am just jelly of anyone getting warmer weather right now!

CC

Hello .

I live in Louisville, KY

I love that it is getting warmer now. I love winter and snow, but only until mid-March and then I develop major spring fever.