What will be different this time? That was the question Brenley asked me.  She knows I’ve been here before.  Lost the weight. Gained it back. This last time, the weight had “excuses”.  My doc was checking my heart function (aka reason to lessen my efforts in my workouts – all came back normal).  I am in perimenopause (weight loss will be near impossible as hormones…)  It’s covid….(so I’m living in leggings and not seeing the gain as much).  I’m just “balanced” (as I eat a burger and fries every time we went out, and indulged in “treats” daily). I am older now, and that’s just how it is…..

In April, I finally did the hormone test after 2 years of talking about it.  We made a couple of changes and I started seeing almost instant results.  Inflammation reduced (and therefore the scale).  Then I joined Freedom to Live Better.   Made a goal to do something terrifying, and so far out of my comfort zone. The work was hard (introspective, digging into my patterns etc).  Next came the Level Up with LivBTR.

Overall, I have dropped more than 20 pounds, but more important than the physical, it’s the mindset.  I hadn’t realized how much I had lost my confidence over the past several years, how being vulnerable and real had taken me to a place of uncertainty and self-doubt. In the past, I had always had outer confidence, I walked tall, and I went after my goals (to an extent, as I had a fear of success and didn’t really feel I deserved them) Now, I am outwardly and inwardly confident.  The shell matches the insides.  I look good and I feel better.  We have had two deaths in the family in barely 4 months. Two HUGE parts of my life, neither has sent me to old habits of stuffing the feelings down with food/treats.  I am expressing what my emotional needs are.  I created boundaries and am not allowing them to be invalidated.  I left a job that was causing me stress and started one that I love.  I have developed a friendship with my Mom, and created new bonds with my husband. I am Leveled Up.  Julie 2.0 (or even 3.0?)

Confidence…something so difficult to discover.  My whole life I have dealt with self-confidence, never feeling truly comfortable in my own skin, but I swore I would do everything in my power to not let that show for my kids, especially my girls.

It is so easy to pick yourself apart.  You are your own worst critic, which I was the queen of.

Then came cancer, and physically I changed more than I could imagine.  I didn’t recognize myself, no hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, bruises, pale, flat, foobies to many scars.  But my children never saw me any different.  They saw their Mommy, changing appearance and all. 

I hit an all time low in self esteem, but I tried not to let it show.  Then I started changing the way I was thinking, I turned all the things I saw as “negative” about myself and turned them into positives, thanks to a lot of help from @bgetsdrenched and Freedom to Live Better.

Instead of looking at myself and being critical, I looked at all the positives.  everything we may find out to be our flaws, someone else finds them as beauty.  We are beautiful the way we are, scars and all!”

I am currently in my second month of Freedom To Live Better. I have lost weight, guilt, sadness, anger, and fear while gaining freedom, happiness, closure, confidence and more moments of peace. Peace is something I never knew I had lost until I started to find it again.

I have had a lot of loss and trauma in my life and for so long I thought I had dealt with those emotions through years of therapy. The therapy absolutely helped me, but I truly believe I had put up a wall that no one could get through, except me. In the past year or so all of those emotions came to the surface through a trigger and I spiralled to a dark place. My wall became so high I wasn't feeling anything. I was able to give love but not receive it. I am a very happy, loving and vibrant person and I had lost all my colour in my vibrant world. I had to CHOOSE to let the wall crumble away piece by piece and learn to not only how to take those steps with the help of Brenley, but that I COULD, I have the POWER. We all do, its in us!

This program continues to change my life and I know by my final week I will have closed two chapters that I never quite finished in my story, ones where I was stuck on writing the ending. The two chapters holding me back from my beautiful new beginning and I can't tell you how freeing that is for me, and for my future.

Food for thought...... A phone call earlier this week with Brenley really brought something to light for me. For the last couple of years, I’ve been doing really strict keto. Tracking everything in Carb Manager. Really paying very close attention to my macros etc. And I did have a lot of success in doing this - success in the sense that I lost a lot of weight. But what I’ve found is that since I did the Gut Reset in November (I gave up my keto eating for this program and focussed on anti-inflammatory super foods, probiotics, etc instead), followed by the Jumpstart and the Freedom to Live Better program, I have not been tracking any of my foods. No foods are really off the table, and I’ve not had any urges to overindulge. And I’ve lost way more weight - currently sitting about 7 lbs below my previous (but unattained) goal weight.

What I’ve realized is that in giving up the control I thought I was exercising over what I was eating, that I actually GAINED control back. By giving up the endless macro counting and ideology of “forbidden” foods and just listening to my body, my body has responded by releasing weigh I’ve carried for three decades.

I just wanted to share what for me was a really scary thing (giving up counting and tracking) that turned into an amazing aha moment. Freedom!

Something this program brought me is to find balance, slowly I am finding it and I have to say learning to let go had been the most rewarding feeling I have experienced in a long time. Finding ways to calm my “critter brain” and focus on my emotions, thoughts and response to things has been life changing.

Thank you Brenley Cunningham for everything this month, you changed everything for me! ❤️