Recent Past

Fast forward to after High School and before marriage (about seven years of time).  During this time I was all over the place on the weight scale.  School made exercise difficult.  I soon learned the value of taking one exercise class a semester, but that didn't always guarantee a slim, perfect body... in fact, I don't know if it's ever been 'perfect'.  In fact, I once discovered that if I ate one pint of Ben and Jerry's I would have to live on the treadmill, for a week,  to break even on the calories.  It was a sad day. I'm only slightly exaggerating for the sake of humor.

My favorite summer, I stayed at Ricks College and worked on grounds crew.  I loved it.  Mowing lawns.  Pulling weeds.  Dead heading flowers.  Sounds like fun, right.  It was.  There were three other girls (Kristin, Andolynn, and Cheryl), we became fast friends, most often goofing off (I still remember almost all our inside jokes, raining pesticides, beautiful boys, racing in the gators to the dump) and sometimes we would talk and uplift one another... we called it Relief Society Weeding (based on the Mormon Church's Organization; Relief Society... the weeding replaced the meetings )  One of them, Cheryl, would run in the morning with me before work.  We would come back to her apartment and eat yogurt and grape nuts, sitting in the cool morning sun.  Then off to work.  Purely Pleasant.

this was one of my skinnier moments during college

Later, I served a mission for my church... before I went out into the field, I lost about 20 lbs.  I was as thin, maybe thinner, than I was in High School.  I ran, and I ran fast for the little time they gave us in the MTC.  It was glorious.  Then, I was sent out to New Jersey, where getting companions to exercise wasn't always possible, food wasn't always a choice (God bless the people who gave in abundance, and my inability to control myself), and I became the biggest I had ever been.  I tried not to notice and tried to just focus on teaching the people... most of the time I just didn't look, it was easier not to notice how changed my body had become.  I wish I had approached this time differently, it wasn't until I had children that I was fully able to realize that sometimes, your body isn't your own.  On a mission, you have decided to dedicate yourself to the Lord's work... hence your body is not really your own, and part of loving the people is allowing them to serve you and give to you in abundance.

I remember this picture, I felt like I needed to hide my belly... so sad.

When, I returned home I changed my diet and nothing happened.  I tried to run and found I couldn't even get further than 1/4 of the track without an asthma attack (it was a small inside track).  After being able to run quickly, after being able to run for miles, realizing that I couldn't even slog it for 100 feet was more than discouraging.  I gave up.  I don't know how long I gave up, when I took my next dance class, when I finally started to run again... but I do know that my weight wouldn't come off again.  I got stuck at 160lbs, 5'2, eyes of blue (I did loose about 20lbs after the mission, but I got stuck at 160).  It didn't seem to matter that I was now running 5-6 miles, sometimes even more.  It wouldn't budge and I wasn't getting smaller in size.  I know that there are some who would be happy to be 5'2 and 160 lbs.  I know that each of us has our own battles and beliefs about weight and bodies.  You can be slim and willowy and hate your body (usually, the body everyone wants), you can be amazingly round and curvaceous and love your body (curves are what make us a woman, why not love it?).  My battle may not be yours, but it's the one I've been fighting for years.  Sometimes I come out conqueror and sometimes I am the victim of my own beliefs.  The size of the body isn't the real war, it's the beliefs, and emotions that come with them, that really matter in our journey to be where we want to be.  When I can find a way to be physically and emotionally healthy, when it comes to how my body looks, I think that is when I will feel I have won my battles and my war... (I mean really, should I be battling my body, should it be all out war against it? Shouldn't it be more of a zen like approach, a loving approach to who I am physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually... etc etc).  That's it, I'm calling off the war.  I'm gonna love myself into being who I want to be.