I have been thinking about starting this blog for several months now.  In fact this is not my first go at the whole blog thing. This time I am truly committed to sticking with this blog to keep track of my journey for however long I feel it is beneficial.

I want to start by sharing why I chose the name that I did for this blog.  Jump Starting Me.  It is, in its truest sense, my number one goal.  Since 2006 my life (spirit, energy, attitude, outlook) have slowly stalled out – my goal is to reclaim those things and improve my quality of life and thus improve Preston’s quality of life, who has become the reason I do anything now.  I find myself comparing my current life with my life in 2005.  That was the year I lost 100lbs.  I had myself convinced I was going to marry my soul mate.  I was in my final year of completing my Bachelor’s degree, and was living the life of a 20-something in Chicago.  I felt alive that year.  I felt confident.  I felt like all of my dreams and fantasies about my adult life were going to play out perfectly.  I couldn’t have been further from reality.  Throughout the past 7 years I told myself that the life I had always envisioned just slipped right out of my hands – and in some senses it did – but I played a large role in retreating to the safety of obesity and general withdrawal from life.  So my blogs name reflects my goal to jump start my body, mind, spirit, and head back to a place that is greatly feared but is the kind of living I want for my life and for Preston’s life.

My focus will be primarily on weight loss.  I know that my weight is my best excuse, my biggest challenge, my most effective protector, my worst enemy, and a death sentence.  I became so supremely aware of my mortality the moment I realized I was pregnant with Preston.  My life was not my own anymore.  God blessed me with the responsibility to raise and care for Preston.  But knowing how much my little man relies on me scares me so much; every time I feel slightly dizzy or have a pinch in my chest I fear I might not be around another day for Preston.  I know being overweight, obese even, means that I won’t be allowed to play the role in Preston’s life that God has intended.  My hope is that through this blog I can explore what happens in my brain that convinces me that making bad eating decisions trump being around for Pres for many more  years to come.  So my primary focus must be to take this weight off – again – and then some.  My plan is to share photos, work out plans, recipes, the whole thing through the blog.  I’m not sure if I’ll be weighing in ‘Biggest Loser’ style every week, but I might share the numbers once I become more comfortable revealing my true weight to the unknown thousands that will someday be reading this blog – we’ll see.

Another area of my life that will likely come up regularly is the struggles I face as a single mom.  Being a single parent is very foreign to me.  My parents have been married for nearly 34 years and thus I have no experience being raised by only one of them.  I have only one single mom friend who lives 850 miles away.  It was never my intention to be a single mom.  I didn’t decide one day that I wanted a child so badly I would just have one and do it by myself.  I made a choice given all the circumstances of what was in Preston’s and my best interests.  But it was a tough choice.  I have second guessed that choice many times over the past 4 years.  But I know that ultimately it is what is best.  My hope is that maybe through this blog I might be connected with other single moms – that would really be great!

Beyond those two areas, I intend to touch on areas of my financial improvements (like budgeting, saving, goal setting etc), my spiritual journey, and basically anything else that I fancy, since this is my blog and all  I can pretty much guarantee that Preston will make several appearances throughout the course of this blog because he is the light of my life, and he is too funny not to share with everyone.  Today I commit to write three days per week.  My intention is that I post five times a week but I don’t want to commit that until I get a sense for this.

Peace be with you…