I easily can see many causes for this. I joined the new gym after the Beaumont YMCA decided to cut free childcare in an effort to cut costs. There was a month lag time in between. Now I didn't instantly become overweight in those few weeks but it didn't help. I'm afraid it has been something that's been building over time and was simply exacerbated by a second pregnancy and the go go go lifestyle of trying to keep kids active during the day. I also did a few months of Once A Month Mom cooking with the unfortunate consequence of eating less healthy meals. Lots of cheese and pasta dishes. But most of all I just let a more sedentary lifestyle and a few more junk food snacks creep in until, bam, I found myself overweight.
There was a great article in Atlantic Monthly about how obesity happens in America and why it so difficult to reign in. In particular I found this quote illuminating:
Obesity belongs in a different category of social illness. You can’t become a
smoker until you decide to start smoking. For all the peer pressure and
advertising that helped turn many 20th-century Americans into walking
chimneys, you don’t have to smoke to live. “But if you go with the flow in
America today, you will end up overweight or obese,” Thomas Frieden, the
director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told me when I
met him at an obesity conference in Washington last summer.
I suppose I thought I was immune to this. We hike and walk all the time. We try to eat a whole foods diet as much as possible. But I have to admit that I fell out of pushing myself and I made one too many trips through the drive-thru when the boys and I are out running errands. Most of all, while I ate breakfast, it wasn't very large and by the boys' naptime I was ravenous and too often "treated" myself to high calorie, low nutrition foods.
For the first time, my efforts to get fit aren't about losing weight per se (although I'd like to get firmly back in the normal BMI range for sure), or looking a certain way, or fitting into a pair of jeans or a swimsuit. No, I'm doing this for the long haul. When we're ready to go for long backpacking trips again I want to be ready. I've listened to enough Dr. Oz on XM radio to know that I don't just want to have a long life, I want a long vital life. I don't want to casually slip my way into type-II diabetes (not a far-fetched proposition given my family history). I may be an older mom in my community but I don't want to feel like an older mom. I know that if I just continute to go with the flow, even with our relatively healthy lifestyle, I will end up very overweight or even obese by the time the boys are grown and Tim and I are ready to retire. Yikes! I'm also facing the fact that as I age it gets more and more difficult to jump start a fitness program.
So I've started counting calories, working out at the gym, and contiously being more active when out and about with the boys. We've nixed the drive-thru. I' m avoiding carbs after dinner so that huge bowl of popcorn on the couch with my husband is being replaced sometimes with a bowl of apple slices. I've found the Virtual Trainer software on Shape.com very helpful. I'll keep trying to post about this and let you know my progress by percentage (I don't want to trigger anyone out there in cyberspace by posting my pounds...each person is different).
It's been two weeks since my epiphany. I've managed to lose a little weight (I'm now on the cusp of BMI overweight) but more importantly, I feel soooooo much better. Brighter actually. It's a nice feeling.
