What's my motivation?

Some days when I feel like this is exhausting I have to remind myself why I am doing it. This week has been great and I feel like I have a second wind. But it's still good to remind yourself what your motivation is. I have two reasons. My first and foremost is just for me. It's totally selfish and shallow, and that's ok. 

I want more than anything to look just like this

 I found this photo on Pinterest and I have been envious of this woman ever since. I know that my body in all honesty will never look "exactly" like this, because I'm not actually shaped this way, and I'm pretty sure this woman hasn't given birth. My stomach (without surgical help) will never look like this. But that's ok. I can get close, and close is good enough for me. 

I want to be sexy, I want to feel hot in my own skin. I want to love shopping and look amazing in everything I try on. I don't want to give in to the idea that my body is supposed to be a mess because I am a mom. I want to be a fit, sexy mom. 

Reason two 

this little girl watches my every move. She wants to be just like me right down to the man I married. She tells me she is going to choose a man just like him. Thank God I picked a good one. She wants to wear makeup, and perfume, she watches how I do it and attempts to copy me. She makes comments about how pretty my clothes are, how pretty my earring are. She wants a purse and a cell phone. She carries her fake phone around and talks on the phone just like I do, she even pretends to text people. Right now she is 5 (this is an old photo) and she is super smart, and super perceptive. She is soaking in everything around her and making sense of what it means to be a girl in the world she lives in. And I am her first example. 

I have often asked my husband if I have said things about myself that might cause my daughter to think women have low self esteem. But he insists that I am quite confident. But my daughter is already very aware of what fat means, and that it isn't pretty. That fat is a bad word that makes people feel bad, and not really because of me, but because of her grandmother. She came back from a weekend with her once and told me she had called her grandmother fat. I told her that wasn't very nice and that probably hurt her feelings. My daughter was puzzled. Up to then fat was simply a fact, a describing word. She insisted "but mom she is fat," and I had the difficult task of explaining why it might upset someone to call them fat. Sadly it starts very early. 

I have tried very hard to use the word healthy instead of skinny in my house. When I work out and she asks why I am doing it, I tell her I want to be healthy. I have also said though that fat is not healthy, fat hurts your heart, and can make you sick. I have attempted to tie the word with the health risks and not the superficial ones. But she isn't dumb, she knows fat is also ugly. From little things I have said without thinking, from TV and magazines, from grandma. They catch on early. As their mother we may be their first influence, but certainly not their only one, and we can't pretend that we can protect them in a bubble where women aren't valued for their looks. 

I know that one day she will totally obsessed with her body image. That she all worry and wonder if she is good enough, and that breaks my heart, but it is the reality we live in. So it is my job as her mother to start her with a healthy lifestyle early. I want her to see me being active, to see me eating healthy, to see that health and fitness are a part of life, a normal thing we do and think about every day. 

One reason I have such a hard time thinking of this as a "lifestyle" change myself is that I didn't grow up in a home where healthy eating and fitness were just part of life. So for me this is a huge shift, it's always a diet. I hope to change my mentality over time too. I hope as it does become a way of life for me and my kids, I will eventually just feel like it is a lifestyle, my lifestyle. 

So there they are. Plain and simple. My reasons to lose weight. What is your reason?