Butterfly

As some of you may know, this week has been a pretty big week for me. After two years, I reached my goal with Weight Watchers! I have been trying to come up with a fantastic blog post that sums up exactly how I am feeling now I have reached this big milestone in my journey. I decided that as some of you are new to my blog, I would repost some of my first blog post explaining why I was joining Weight Watchers. I hope this will give you an insight into why I started my journey in the first place. 

"In 2011, in my first year of blissful marriage my handsome, healthy, witty, strong husband became very ill. My rock, my love, my best friend. He was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma which was at a borderline stage 4. My world could have crumbled, but together, with the strength given to us by our faithful Lord, we muddled our way through a blur of scans, biopsies, chemotherapy, surgery, drips, morphine and lots of other medical words that still make my skin crawl. I watched my amazing husband make it onto the dreaded critical list in November 2011 and then slowly regain his strength in the months to follow. After a testing, tear filled few months..my warrior reached complete remission and was told he was cancer free. He has, since then gone from strength to strength and is the picture of health. 

HEALTH being the key word. Everything that happened to my beloved made me realise our life really is so precious. We don't know what is right around the corner or what battles we might face. So why waste time with excuses..."I'll join Weight Watchers tomorrow, I don't feel like it today."...."I'll go for that walk tomorrow, I'm too tired today." In the year of caring for my love, I gained a lot of the weight I had originally lost in Weight Watchers. I beat myself up for months, but did nothing about it...other than continue to comfort eat. And then it clicked. Please God, one day we will have a family. I want to be here to watch them grow up. I want to be able to go for walks and not get out of breath. I want to feel like I am living each day with my miracle husband to the fullest and not look back and regret a thing." 

I can honestly say my husband was the inspiration for me joining Weight Watchers. I joined for MY health, but I joined because my incredible husband inspired me to do so. And every step of the way, he has supported me. He's listened to me moan, he has celebrated with me and he has put up with my experimenting with food.

Now I am at goal, I'm learning to love myself. I've got stretch marks & a bit of excess skin on my arms, thighs and tummy but you know what? That's ok. I've lost almost 7 stone, I have battle scars & I am proud of myself for getting this far. I'm learning to be kinder to myself.

My ultimate goal when I started was never be be a size zero, or weigh a certain tinie tiny weight..it was to be healthy. I was obese and incredibly unhealthy & something had to change. After seeing my hubby fight for his life, I realised I was abusing my health & I needed to fix it. Along the journey I have learnt to love myself more, not be so hard on myself and accept nobody is perfect but that's what makes us unique. It has been a learning curve & one I know will help me stay at goal this time. Previously I didn't change my lifestyle at all...it was all about being skinny, where as this time I am hungry for living! I want to climb mountains & go walking, I want to experiment with foods & encourage others too. I want to live my life, not just exist in it!

As I was struggling with what to write for this blog post, the idea of a caterpillar and a butterfly came to mind. A caterpillar in it's own right is a beautiful creature. But it thinks all it's life, it will be a caterpillar. It will spend it's life doing caterpillar things, going from leaf to leaf...munching it's way through the day..until one day being a caterpillar is no longer enough.

The caterpillar longs for more.

I was the caterpillar...and after two years of fighting for more.

I feel like a beautiful butterfly ready to spread her wings and fly!