Challenge: Taking Care of Me

As part of my (not quite) Empty Nest Journey, one of my main goals is to start taking care of me and my own health challenges and needs.

I don’t know if any other mothers out their can relate (kidding this is a HUGE problem for moms everywhere).  When you become a care-giver, you put the needs of others first and tend to not worry so much about your own needs, your own health, and your own interests.

Over the years, I have kind of taken this to an extreme and most of the time now use it as an excuse (in my own head) to justify not taking care of me.  You know — “I’ll worry about me later, right now I just need to get through this (fill in the blank)”

So now here I am at the beginning of my empty nest journey, and I feel so physically spent and unhealthy that I fear I will not be able to enjoy what I plan on being some of the BEST years of my life!

My goal is to get myself into a better physical condition so that I can enjoy the activities I plan, like traveling.

Step One:  Eat Healthy and Lose Weight.

This is a very personal issue for me and a little hard to talk about it.  But I know that it does not do me any good to keep trying to hide it, not talk about it, and pretend that it doesn’t exist.  When clearly every body in the world can see that it does!

Last week, I talked about how to stop procrastinating and how to stay motivated when the task seems GINORMOUS.

To me losing weight seems like a ginormous task.  It is something that I have struggled with my entire life.  I am a comfort eater, so when I feel stress or tension, I try and shove it back down with a bag of potato chips so that I don’t have to deal with it.

One of my mentors and online friends is Lynn Terry.  Several years ago she adopted a way of eating that seems to really work well.  She eats low carb – keeping her net daily carb intake below 20.  She runs a very successful 90 day low carb challenge group on Facebook.  I have joined that group and although I’m two weeks late for the recent challenge, today is day 1 for me in my journey to take care of me.

I have tried variations of this way of eating in the past such as Atkins, and that is actually when I felt the healthiest and was able to lose some serious weight.  Sadly and for whatever reasons, I didn’t have the follow through that I needed.

Adopting a low carb way of eating can be very controversial.  Some say it is not healthy and can in fact be dangerous.  Well to that I say, what I am doing is not healthy and is very dangerous.  Adopting this method of eating is really just watching your carb intake.  What happens is that instead of your body using carbs (sugars) for energy, it actually starts burning fat for energy.  So actually it is a very healthy way of eating for someone (like me) who has issues with blood sugar.

So for now, I will just say that I have started.  I will be posting results, challenges and success every Monday.  My goal in doing this is two part:

• Keep myself accountable.  My bringing my struggle out into the open (even though that is very difficult of me), it will make me more accountable to keep pushing forward and taking action.
• To hopefully inspire you.  As caregivers we so very often put our own needs last.  Whether you are empty nesting or not, it is super important to “take care of me”.

Be sure to sign up to the AHWH list so you can stay up to datewith the journey of health.  I hope that some of you will join me. 🙂

Talk soon,

P.S.  I mentioned in my last point that I will start on Monday…. well guess what today is Monday, game on!!