Better Way Body Journey – Update!
Our Chief Technology Mom has an update on her Better Way Body Journey. Her video update is posted below, so you can check it out! Hint: exercise is really turning out to make a huge difference for Michelle. We love this. Not only does it help her feel better, it keeps her on track. But she’ll tell you more about that below. We want to take a second and really thank the amazing folks over at Gigabody for giving Michelle the chance to try out their new site! We are so proud of Michelle for her hard work, her dedication…and most of all, her success. And seriously, how awesome is her new hair cut? Love! As always, if you enjoy the video, please make sure to share it! We know lots of people out there are working to find their Better Way Bodies, too. Michelle is here to...
Read MoreThe Journey to My Better Way Body
By now, many have you have gotten to know me here at Better Way Moms. To all of you new readers, I’m Michelle, the Chief Technology Mom, and I’m here to start a personal journey to my better way body. This isn’t a contest, nor is it something I’m doing for good PR. In fact, much of my life has been spent dealing with the scale. I’m sure many of you can relate. You step up on the scale and once that number shows up, you’re either convinced you’re living on another planet with entirely different gravity or that your scale is broken. Once the reality sets in that the number is, in fact, true, you may feel inspired to change or you may just go about your day in a complete state of denial. I’m in the former category. The thing is, I’ve never been skinny. Sure, I’ve been at a healthy weight many times, but the fact of the matter is, I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing my stomach flat. Perhaps I can chalk it up to bad genetics, or that a life of consistently being up and down on the scale has done such a number on my body physically that I never once felt what it was like to have a flat stomach. I don’t mean the rock hard abs kind, either. I just mean one that wasn’t sloped in some way. I was an active kid, and I never really knew that I was “different†until about middle school when I had a friend over to swim in my pool. You see, she wore a two piece suit that showed off her flat stomach, and there I was, in a two piece, and I noticed that my stomach curved. My thighs were thicker. Everything about me was a bit more plump. It was that very moment that I become self-conscious about my body, and thus started a many years long battle of feeling completely uncomfortable in my own skin. Around high school, I took matters into my own hands and joined Weight Watchers with my mom and, after months of following the plan to the letter, I got down to a healthy weight and felt amazing. While my stomach still wasn’t “flat,†clothes fit better. I was somewhat confident, and I was happily wearing smaller, skinnier jeans and dresses that fit in all...
Read MoreHow I Started My 2013, Part I
My daughter was born exactly two weeks into 2013; an occasion many mothers would rejoice in, take pride in, document and proclaim. Birth is a monumental event. It grows us as people. We now have a new title to add to our growing list; daughter, wife, CEO, freelancer, homemaker. Mom. My daughter’s birth wasn’t the first time I became mom. It was the moment I became Mom 2.0. I wasn’t new to this mom gig, but that doesn’t mean that the time leading up to my daughter’s birthday wasn’t without the same first-time parent jitters. In fact, it was frightening because this time I knew what to expect, and not all of it was good. The impending occasion scared me, and I still feel guilty about that. I spent my entire pregnancy with my daughter scared and anxious, mostly because I knew what a difficult time I had birthing my son. I was scared of breastfeeding failure, of the postpartum blues, the hormone drop, the endless nights, the hot flashes and the crying, and this time, not being able to sleep when baby slept because I also had an 18 month old to take care of. I was scared of the surgery pain. I had to have a c-section, as just 18 months prior to my daughter, I already had an emergency c-section to deliver my son. I was not a good candidate for a VBAC delivery. I was afraid of weight gain. I had already lost the weight from my son, and having battled weight my whole life, I wasn’t ready to pack on the pounds. I was afraid of developing an unhealthy relationship with food. I was afraid of adding more strain to my already-strained marriage. Becoming parents as a couple is a tough transition, and just when I thought my husband and I had figured it out, it was all about to change again. Oh, there was also the stress that my husband had just lost his job prior to us finding out I was pregnant. I never felt prepared for our daughter, and that made me feel really guilty. When we found out I was pregnant with our son, we were ecstatic. We had been trying for over a year. The pregnancy was smooth. The house was clean. We felt ready for it. With my daughter, everything was out of sorts. I didn’t want her...
Read MoreReboot. Retry.
I recently had to do some routine updates to my computer. Nothing major, just the occasional software update, file cleanup and all of that stuff. Since I was doing a better job cleaning up my machine than my actual house, I went ahead and updated some applications and programs that I had been ignoring, one of which is a major component to my business. Once all was said and done, I rebooted my machine, rearranged my desktop, changed the display photo and then proceeded to do some work. Except the one major component to my business decided to not work. At all. In fact, my machine didn’t recognize it anymore. I felt panic set in, as I started to Google why this would happen. I put out an SOS on Facebook, got some helpful feedback, but none of it worked. I was trying not to have a meltdown as my two year old was having his own in the background. My husband was trying to corral the kids as I was dying a bit inside, wondering how this was going to absolutely, 100% kill my productivity. The kids went off for their naps, the house was quiet and instead of my usual routine of working or cleaning, I decided to sit down and conquer my machine once and for all. I’m not at all technologically stupid, but this was a little beyond my scope of knowledge. With a little research, I found out what may have been the problem, but wasn’t exactly positive. So, I did something rather risky and started to delete the program bit by bit, receipt by receipt, file by file. I was wiping it from existence. I found the original disk and started to perform a program install, hoping that the older version would work with my more updated, more sophisticated operating system. Lo and behold, my machine made a chime. I proceeded with the install finish and, there it was, the program I needed. And it worked. I’m sure there are some software engineers and IT professionals reading this laughing at my rather simple problem, but to me, in that moment, it was pretty big and given the week I had just had, I was not in the mood to deal with another thing gone wrong. Rather than throw my hands up in the air and waving a white flag, I fixed it. And...
Read MoreEscape to Me
The 9-month-old is cranky. The 2-year-old is upset that he can’t fit his puzzle pieces together. The work queue is piling up. There’s a stain on the floor and I’m not sure how old it is. I forgot to thaw something this morning so I could make dinner tonight. Why does my shirt smell so funny? Did I just miss my son’s flu shot appointment? I think I missed that writing deadline. Breathe. Tomorrow will be different. Nay, 5:30PM will be different. Dinner will be calm. There will be a bath, a story, lights out. The house will fall quiet. Breathe. Think of stillness. Placid. An escape. A vacation. If I could go anywhere, where would it be? Would I go across the pond to a different country? A small town in Italy, perhaps a hideaway in the countryside of Scotland. Maybe a coast somewhere, where the ocean is at the tips of my toes. Sea shells at the ready for collecting, the salt air tickling my nose. Maybe somewhere cold, a place where I can wrap myself in a thick sweater and drink real cocoa, prepared warm and perfect. No. My ideal vacation isn’t a place I can physically visit. I would escape to find myself in my own head. I want to visit the place where magic happened, where words were written. Poetry composed itself. I would vacation to the parts of my mind that held onto dreams, where bitterness didn’t exist, where postpartum depression wasn’t in the equation. That spot in my head that wasn’t afraid, that set goals and met them. The space in my crown where negative was canceled by positive. I want to go where stories still exist, where make-believe isn’t fantasy, where “I can†and I will†and “I did†are the only affirmations ever uttered. It exists somewhere in there, probably below the piles of “I’m too busy†and “I do too much†and “I am not enough.†The core of me, now branched into many different people. Mother. Wife. Writer. Homemaker. Me. I would venture on a journey to find me again, introduce her to myself and make her part of my life again. I can. I will. I shall. Author:...
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