Excavating My Real Self

This is me. Or it was last May when Erik and I first got together. On the right is actually our first date and the day we became an official couple. Please ignore my ridiculous bird impersonation.

I was cute (or at least I felt cute and Erik likes curvy girls). Maybe I would get a nose job if I won the lottery, but I really have come to terms over the years with my wide-bridged schnauz. When my weight is down (I was around 140 in these pictures), my face thins out and even my big Polish nose seems to get a little thinner. I look and feel much, much prettier. Then I find a good hairstylist, a good box of hair dye (I love the newish Jon Frieda foaming stuff you can do yourself - the colors last so well, even the reds!), and a new wardrobe off the Kohl's clearance racks. Ninety percent of looking good is feeling good and I felt amazing.

These are my inspiration pictures.

I want to get back to my happy weight. 140 for me is amazing. I have a muscular, curvy build. I could lose a little more at that point, do some toning especially, but really it was great. Fitting into size ten jeans was incredible. I finally wore a pair of shorts that weren't knee-skimming bermudas and I looked cute. I want to have the body I had when the man I love fell in love with me.

He's great, don't get me wrong. He's never made me feel bad about my weight gain (which honestly started before I got pregnant, after I moved back to Memphis [I had been living in Colorado for the previous ten months which is part of how I lost so much weight to begin with] and was less active because it was summer and horrible) and he'll tell me out of the blue, "You look really cute today in that shirt." He's still massively turned on by me, even with my empty belly overhang, horrid stretch marks, and c-section scar. We made it a whole twelve days before I sent him for condoms and lube and we did the deed again post-partum. It was supposed to be six weeks? Oops.

Still, I want to feel sexy again with my clothes off. I want to get back into my small tops, all packed away in my mom's attic in a bin. I miss my red tube top and cute sundresses. Simply put, I want to be me again, the real me I found out I can be. The real me I'd been covering up with chocolate and carbs because I never felt good about myself. The real me that I didn't know could exist until she ran away and broke out.

It took living with a hot-headed ex that bordered on abusive (definitely manipulative) to make me feel so bad I needed to stop eating, then leaving him and feeling so good I just didn't need to comfort eat and got out more. I was a fat girl all through school and then I managed to lose that. Now it's here again and I will not let Fat Jaclyn win. Fat Jaclyn is not a happy person, not a healthy person. She's not who I want my daughter to grow up with. This time it won't take a bad ex to get myself in shape. Now that I know I can do it, I have a much better inspiration: I want to be able to chase my little girl around, to be a hot mom (I'm only twenty-two for Christ's sake!) and not some frumpy thing who let herself go when she had kids.

So now that I've rambled again, let's get to the bottom line of this post. Every Thursday (since I had my daughter on a Thursday and therefore that marks another week post-partum) I will weigh myself and take pictures of my progress to post on here. I weighed myself yesterday, but fell a little behind and only took the pictures today. Oops. Here it is:

Two things before I continue: First off, my underwear looks so ridiculous because I'm still wearing granny panties after my c-section and I scrunched them down to get the pictures. Second, please refrain from mocking the stickers on my mirror. This was my room growing up and they were all added between ages 13 and 15. We're living with my parents right now.

So I was wrong on my weigh in of 233. It's 233.5. Oh well. I'm still pleased, even if it's 4.5 pounds lost and not five. I'm eating much less than I used to and much, much less than I was while pregnant, so I think it'll help me have a good weigh in next week, too. I actually was very naughty and went in the pool today and swam around, so I'm starting to get more exercise. I think I'm not actually supposed to do that until I'm six or eight weeks post-partum, but I'm healed up really well and I've actually stopped really bleeding, so I said fuck it and hopped in. Totally worth it. It felt so good. Memphis in the summer is hell.

One more thing to wrap this up. Each week, in addition to posting my weight and some pics, I will force myself to find something good to say about my body. So here it is. The dark line that hasn't left yet looks like a cool birthmark or tattoo. Some women don't ever lose theirs, and I think I could live with that.