Life Lately.....

It has definitely been a hot minute since my last "real" post. The past couple of months have definitely been tough! After TJ's competition, he, like most competitors do after their first show, rebounded....bad. For those of you who do not know what that is...he started eating all of the things he had been craving during his prep which caused him to retain tons of water. It was almost like the domino effect from that point forward. Like many people who have struggled with their weight, if you do not really watch yourself you can become obsessed with it. Gaining weight & having his body not look the way he knew it should brought TJ down into a depression. This depression literally affected every aspect of our lives. Our relationship, my progress, his schooling, friendships, ect. all suffered as a result of his rebound. I decided I would step away from blogging to fully focus on helping him get back into the right frame of mind. Alot of people do not realize how hard making a lifestyle change can be mentally, some assume that once you have this smoking hot body and are in a diet and exercise routine that it becomes easy. That is not the case at all. When you were morbidly obese for the majority of your life like TJ and I were, typically, food is your drug of choice...an addiction if you will. It is something you think about almost all of the time. It took 5 months for TJ to get over his depression and I can finally say...we are in the clear. As most of you know from past posts, TJ had been working with a coach during his contest prep and continued to work with him post show. His coach was awesome and really tried to help TJ the best way he knew how while TJ was struggling, however, the added pressure of sending stats, progress pics, and having some lines blurred between coach and friend took their toll on the relationship and TJ and his coach decided to part ways a couple of weeks ago. I was initially devastated since I had also started using him to try and get over my plateau & because I had grown to love him and his family. The day after they parted ways, however, TJ took on a whole different look. The water he had been holding started to drain off, the bags under his eyes disappeared, and all of the swelling in his legs and arms (happens when he stresses) went away. It was literally like falling asleep next to a stranger and waking up next to the man I married. As I watched his body change over the next week, I really started to feel that though I hate the loss of that friendship it may have been God answering my prayers and giving TJ exactly what he needed to find himself again. I debated over sharing any of this story, however, I think it is a true testament to how sometimes our lives blessings are disguised as trials. So...with all of that out of the way, let me get down to business. I had gained 10lbs during the course of the last few months & in the past 2 weeks have lost 8lbs of the 10lbs. I am going to start updating my blog with my fitness journey weekly again; along with recipes, workouts, and the general day to day life stuff. I have been dying to blog and am so excited to finally be at a point in life where I can.