Sandy Esprit

.When I gave birth to my eldest daughter I was obsessed with getting my snapback. I thought I would be like all the celebrities and instagram models I kept seeing. I did everything I could to lose  weight. I exercised, I did a low-carb diet, I tried my best to sleep but have you tried to maintain a healthy lifestyle with a newborn with little to no help? It’s absolutely impossible. It took me a whole year to get back to my pre-baby weight and even then I was 5 pounds heavier. I had a little mommy pouch which was still very new to me. I just didn’t understand why it wasn’t. So I just stopped caring and focused on building my self-esteem so that my girl would have a confident mother who could effectively show her what self-confidence looks like.

When I gave birth to my second daughter, I thought it would be easier to lose the weight because I was so small to begin with. But to be honest I didn’t really care about the weight. I just wanted to be happy and confident. Until five months later, I was asked if I was pregnant, which followed up with a dietary suggestion. Well, let’s just say that completely messed up what little body confidence I had. My whole life my body was critiqued for being small now I was critiqued for being overweight. I’m not going to lie, I was overweight but who cares?

Turns out, some people. If I was truly honest with myself, I would say that I cared too. I didn’t want to be as small as before. I liked my womanly figure. I celebrated the layers of fat that my pre-baby body once rejected like a virus. I liked that I had curves. I liked it a lot. What I didn’t like was being called pregnant, looking pregnant and having a belly that just didn’t want to behave with the rest of my body. I wanted to feel good. I’m a visual person, so I know that when I like what I see in the mirror I feel better about me. 

So I decided to do better. It started with the exercises. As uncoordinated as I was I knew that I had to get my body moving again. I couldn’t just sit around on the couch all the time and live vicariously through my energetic toddler. The calories she burned were not my own. The endorphins she produced were not my own either. 

And it just kept on building. I was able to try NeoCell Beauty Bursts, which are these delicious collagen soft chews that taste like candy. I took one everyday and noticed that my skin started looking better. I drank more water and felt like I had more energy. I wasn’t losing weight, at least not according to the scale but I saw improvements in my overall well-being. 

As you can see in this picture, I am still resting my arm on my post-partum pooch. It’s a bad habit that I’ve grown fond of. I know I said I hated having a big belly but I never said it didn’t come with its own perks. Who needs an arm rest, when you have a belly to rest your arm on?

Please understand that life at home wasn’t the greatest. We were in the middle of a pandemic. Literally on a lockdown, so there wasn’t a gym I could join or go to. We couldn’t go to the park because they were closed. My edges were falling out. I wasn’t sleeping throughout the night because I was breastfeeding. I was not eating well, in fact most mornings I would skip because I was so busy making sure that everyone else had breakfast.  I was the only one working out, literally. I had no one to be accountable to but myself. 

I also was a cookie addict so I needed to address that. The late night Oreo binge would need to come to an end. I knew it but I kept it delaying it until God answered my prayers with these Grenade protein bars. I normally hate protein bars because I find that they have a really bad after taste. But Grenade are OMG delicious! 

They pack some serious chocolate and I LOVE chocolate. My favourites are chocolate chip and salted caramel which remind of me of a Mars bar. As well as the cookie dough which remind me of a Twix bar. They have so many selections to choose from. It curbs from hunger and keeps me from attacking the cookie cupboard like a starving fiend. They are a true lifesaver. If you want to try them for yourself (believe me, you won’t be disappointed) click this link https://bit.ly/Grenade_Sandy and use the code SANDY25 to save 25% on your order.

When I changed my eating habits and added  to my work out routine to make them more challenging things really began to change. In two months I lost 10 pounds. It’s not a lot but for me it’s enough. I’ve got more energy and I’m more driven now. I’ve noticed this spill over into other areas of my life. I now schedule breaks, which doesn’t come naturally to me. But in order to be my best self, I need to be rested. 

I love that what started as a health journey was more the jump start I needed to focus. I wanted to look better so I could feel better. However it dawned on me that it was never about the physical body but the spiritual and emotional body. Once I was aligned I was able to thrive. 

Have you experienced something similar? Let me know in the comments.