Welcome to my cozy corner of the web! I want to start out this new home online by sharing with you a little bit about myself and why I was motivated to launch this blog in the first place! I’m 38 years old, I’m a mom to 2 biological children and 5 step children, 3 of which are grown and 4 we’re still actively raising, ranging from ages 7 to 23.
My family and I are located in Arkansas on a quaint 6 acre small family farm just a few miles down the road from where my family on my dad’s side settled here 9 generations ago! Our family roots in this community are deep and strong but I did spend 22 years of my life in Arizona living south of Phoenix and loved it! So that time in the desert definitely shaped who I am today!
I love home life and mom life, cleaning and cooking and DIY’ing anything in my spare time but I don’t have much spare time as I’m the classic over-achiever! I’ve been an entrepreneur for 13 years now, working in real estate and finance. I own my own consulting firm that I launched in 2019 and it has happily kept my plate full ever since! But in my spare time I love writing, gardening, redecorating our house for the 100th time, reading, hiking, going on nature walks, playing with our 1 year old chocolate lab Maple or canoodling our adorable barn cats Ernesto and Sterling!
A lot of us get to an age where we decide we need to take better care of ourselves so that we can be healthy grandparents or just feel good in our older years. For me, that concern started when I was in my early 20s, a single mom to two little boys and morbidly obese, as seen below.
So in 2010 after much research and inner turmoil, I had a bariatric (weight loss) surgery to help me lose weight. At the time my children were 4 and 6 years old and I was only 25 years old so I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have more children so I opted for the lapband surgery as the band itself is adjustable. Which means, they could remove saline from the band to allow me to eat more if I were to get pregnant, so I could have a healthy pregnancy. Plus all other weight loss surgery options then were newer and very invasive and very…permanent. So I went with the band.
It looks something like this!
My journey with my health, weight loss, healing, personal discovery and self love is such a long one I actually wrote a book about it, but have yet to finish it! Keep an eye out for that in 2024! But I’ll sum up my journey and say, I took me 13 years to lose 130 pounds. My weight loss was very slow, I’d sit at a weight for 1-2 years before I’d progress another 10-15 pounds. In the process I was tackling a lot of inner demons, working on myself and breaking bad habits one at a time. I knew this had to be a slow, permanent lifestyle change for me. I learned how to actually cook, learned about nutrition and exercise, learned how our body actually functions on the inside (still learning more on that all the time actually), I quit sodas in 2010, quit cigarettes for vaping in 2016, quit a monster energy drink addiction in 2017, quit sweet tea in 2019 and finally quit all nicotine (vaping) in 2023 ending a 20 year addiction!
I learned a lot about myself during this time but the biggest thing I learned was that I LOVED being active! I became an athlete for the first time in my life, completing my first 5k in 2011 and my first half marathon in 2012! I also picked up Tennis and wasn’t too bad at it, fell in love with hiking and exploring and just haven’t quit! Then in 2016 I started yoga and that lead to daily yoga for 18 months which was the most transformational time in my life! I happily call myself a yogi and a hiker, because these things make my soul happy!
In 2019 when I cut out sweet tea, I lost an additional 30 lbs from where I had been sitting for a good 2 or 3 years and that put me down at my lowest I’ve ever been! The pictures below are me at my lowest and I was there 12-14 months. I honestly don’t expect to ever be this size again as my band was really tight during that time and I don’t believe I was consuming enough calories to actually BE HEALTHY.
For reference, here is where I am today in late 2023, 50 pounds heavier! Hint, I had all the fluid removed from my lap band in December 2019 and I immediately began gaining because really I hadn’t become more mindful, the band just hardly ever let me eat and that’s how I got down to my lowest weight. Above I was not exercising, I was not eating well, I was not taking care of myself. Within 3 months I had gained 50 lbs!!!! I know, shocked me too! And then I’ve been working to lose the same 10 pounds for the last 3 years, literally! But by working I mean not really working but just mad about it all the time and unhappy in my clothes although NOT hating myself because I have a lot of grace for this body after all we’ve been through!
The difference is that where I am today is an “almost 40 year old” woman, the number on the scale no longer matters to me and my ultimate goal is physical fitness and internal health as well as mental health! And so I’m starting this blog 45 days after starting a new lifestyle change with myself where I’m actually tracking my food, protein, water, sleep, steps, exercises, etc. I started a powder vitamin I add to water daily to make sure I’m getting all my nutrients since my lap band restricts how much I can eat, I set a goal to eat 100+ grams of protein per day to build muscle and burn fat, I’m doing yoga, strength training and walking daily! My steps have gone from 1500 a day having a work from home desk job to now meeting 8000 per day since I walk 2 miles a day!
So my goal for this blog is to share not my journey but rather the tips I learn along the way that could help you too! I want to meet you where you are and if you’re here because you came across a research article comparing Samsung wearable or because I shared an amazing low-carb, family friendly recipe…then welcome! I’m glad you’re here! I feel like in order for each of us to be well rounded and really taking care of all parts of ourselves, we need to remember the mind, our inner peace and that inner happiness! So I’ll be sharing tips on ways I discover that make it easier to be mindful, how to be present, the benefits of meditation, apps to use, etc. And I hope you find it all so interesting and useful that you subscribe to my blog and the email list and enjoy every article I post! Please do comment on an article if you have a question, insight, encouragement or love to give!
