food freedom Archives -

Have y’all seen FIT(ish) apparel?!?!

I’ve been in LOOOOOOOOOOVE for a while now but every time I add a few super cute tops to my cart, I forget to ever actually checkout lol. (Hey, my shopping friends….do you ever just go to your fave online shopping site and add things to your cart….and then kinda purposely LEAVE them…IN THE CART? It’s like the rush of shopping minus the spending part. lol #sometimesitworks #sometimesitdoesnt)

ANYHOO, I saw another coach with a FIT(ish) tank on yesterday so I finally decided I was gonna order! But, not really seeing a FB ad for it like how I normally see them, I went to Google. So, funny story….I type in FIT(ISH) and Google asks “Did you mean FET(ISH)?” and then proceeds to pop up a warning that the key word I’m searching for MAY bring up some sketchy content. Ok, sketchy is my word, not Google’s…but I had to laugh that GOOGLE tried to autocorrect the word FOR me and THEN proceeded to tell me that I probably shouldn’t have been searching for what “I” was searching for….and should be prepared for what I was about to see lol. Um, thank you but just let me search what I put in and we should be just fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

So, after Google actually let me get to where I was going, I FINALLY ordered this!!

AND this!!

(Ok, yes, I admit that my meme shirts and tanks collection knows no bounds but life’s too short not to have a little fun and they make me happy.)

So, HOW PERFECT IS THIS?!?!

FIT(ish): Semi-fit; Kind of fit. Someone who likes the idea of being fit but equally likes food.

Can I get a HALLELUJAH?!? Can I get an AMEN?!?

Ummmmm, hElLo….I’m Dina & I’m FIT……ish.

I TOTALLY love the idea of being fit.

I TOTALLY love working out….MOST of the time.

BUT, I equally love food…..especially in the form of cupcakes & sushi & pizza….OH & not food….but & beer…..& wine.

#justkeepinitrealyall

Which is why I totally needed this shirt AND do something fun with this concept!!

Here’s the current FIT(ish) me ~

I COULD pick myself apart.

Ok, actually, indulge me for a second while I do just that….lol.

I currently have a muffin top. I don’t have a thigh gap (and pretty sure I never will….not that it’s really even a goal of mine to have one). My arms & thighs & calves are “thick.” I have back fat & armpit fat. I gain first in my boobs and lose first…in my boobs lol. I’m working on a double chin again. AND, what you can’t see in these pics are cellulite and stretchmarks on my tummy & thighs and a C-section shelf (ha, what’s a C-section shelf you’re maybe wondering?? It’s like an extra layer of skin that just hangs out over a C-section scar ~ I wouldn’t trade my scar for anything in the world BUT that shelf can get gone any year now lol…..seriously she’s 7).

Speaking of thigh gaps. #fridayfunny

SO, YES, I still SEE and FEEL all those things. I’d be lying to y’all if I said I didn’t.

But, here’s the deal. I don’t obsess about them anymore.

When I was this size before I had B, I often wore over-sized clothing to hide everything. And, I wouldn’t be caught DEAD in a swimsuit and often declined invitations to any predicament that would involve one (how sad).

But, as my weight has crept up these past 2 years, I decided I wouldn’t be hiding THIS TIME. AND, I certainly didn’t want B to see me hiding….especially when it came to swimsuits and not enjoying the water with her. I LOVE the water!! I always have! So, I was even denying myself something I enjoyed out of fear of being judged….(mostly by people who didn’t even know me or would likely ever see me again mind you!!!)…..and not loving myself for EVERY stage my body is in.

Maybe part of this simply comes with age. I do believe the older and hopefully wiser we get we just simply start to care less and less what others think of us.

But, I also believe I’m just a different person than I was back then. I’m stronger on the inside. I could give a rat’s ass if someone rolls their eyes at me because I wore a bikini to the pool (AND YOU SHOULD, TOO!). I’m not interested in being a picture of perfection for my team or my clients or any of you because I don’t believe anyone NEEDS me to be perfect AND AND I would NEVER expect anyone else to be perfect….I simply believe they need me to believe in them and support them the best I can and for me to keep sharing the real story.

Know that you can start late, look different, be uncertain and STILL succeed.

While I certainly didn’t expect to be a “plus-size” health & fitness coach after over 3-1/2 years, I have to believe there’s a reason I’m here. As I reflect on my struggles since I started, I honestly don’t think I would be as strong as I am now had I stayed thinner and not dealt with what life threw at me. I believe with all my heart that God has been teaching me something through all of this. I didn’t always stop to listen BUT as I said in my last blog post (if you wanna read a bit more, you can check it out HERE), we grow through what we go through. I wouldn’t have grown if it weren’t for the struggle. I wouldn’t appreciate my health like I do. I wouldn’t have as many of the tools I do now to survive and thrive because I wouldn’t have went looking for them. And, I believe there are people in my life I either never would’ve met or they wouldn’t have the same place in my heart and my life they do now. It’s a blessing in disguise. It’s a “God thing.”

I’m here to say today that I AM embracing this season!!

I’m owning my “plus-size” body!! (Us coaches really do come in ALLLLLLLL different shapes and sizes! That’s the beauty of what it means to be a coach! None of us are perfect! And, we don’t have to be!! We don’t have to be F.I.T. all the time. We don’t have to be a certain percentage of body fat. We don’t have to have a physical transformation story. We don’t have to have it all figured out. We don’t have to have a degree or certification in anything. We just have to be better than we were yesterday….a majority of the time. We just have to love and honor our bodies and our minds. We just have to CARE. We just have to build others up. We just have to share what we’ve been through and share the tools we’ve been fortunate enough to be given.)

I’m also here to say I still have FIT(ish) goals!!

I’m not sure I’ll ever compete on stage like I’ve talked about before. I still think of it from time to time but I’ve also read stories of women who’ve done it and while it was one of the things they felt the most proud about, it also really messed with their mind and their body. I’m not sure given my history it’s a good idea to purposely try to do either after all this hard work and the hard work I’m gonna continue to do.

I’m fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go to the Riviera Maya next spring for a coaching reward and rest assured I WILL be ROCKIN’ a bikini! A coach friend of mine made the goal to be in a swimsuit for like the first time EVER on the annual trip for us a few months ago and SHE.FREAKING.ROCKED.THAT.GOAL. AND, she JUST announced this week that next year by this time she WILL ROCK a BIKINI because she’s never been in a bikini. I decided I’m taking that challenge with her!!!!

Her name is Amy….or as I like to call her “Amazing Amy”….and here she is!
Not only is her transformation amazing, her Faith, her joy, her love of helping and praying over others is TRULY AMAZING.
You can click on the image to go to her FB page for more of her story 🙂
She has completed many BB programs! Including in the past year, the Ultimate Reset, the 21 Day Fix, a few rounds of Core De Force and is currently in THE OFFICIAL TEST group for the new program coming out in July, SHIFT SHOP!

Wow, just wow, right?!?

And, here I was the last time I committed to a bikini goal. This was also before & on a coach trip when I got to take my sister to Cancun!!

Was I the fittest coach in the pool? Um no. Was I the fittest I’ve ever been in a bikini? Um yes.
And, that was all that mattered to me.
I’m making a promise to myself to be MORE FIT(ish) this next time in Mexico!!!

I’m embracing where I’m at in my journey…..but I’m sooooooo not done.
I honestly don’t have a bikini that fits me right now so I don’t have a “before” pic yet but I will be sharing soon to stay accountable.

AND, I have an exciting opportunity for YOU if you’d like to be more FIT(ish) with ME!

I’m hosting a new FIT(ish) Bootcamp starting June 19th and I’d LOVE to have some beautiful-just-the-way-you-are women join me! We’ll be working on our bodies for sure BUT we’ll be working harder on our minds! I wanna focus on helping YOU rock that swimsuit no matter what! I’ll be using the OOLA Fitness & Fun tips (if you haven’t heard me talk about OOLA for Women, you should be excited and honestly join even just for that!!)

CLICK HERE TO APPLY!
OR scroll all the way to the bottom and apply right on this page 🙂

I’m only taking 10 new clients so apply asap to be considered!

And, I’ll leave you with this because if you don’t already believe this, print this out like a hundred times and PUT IT EVERYWHERE!

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My journey to repair my relationship with my body and with food has been filled with many peaks and valleys.

I’ve tried countless “diets”, pills, potions, fads and quick fixes.

I’ve went through seasons of totally not caring about what I ate to obsessing about what I ate over and over again.

I’ve isolated myself from family and friends in my more obsessive of seasons.

I’ve watched my weight yo-yo time and time again.

I’ve spent countless hours researching and reading and reading and researching for the “best” approach to finding food freedom and a healthy body image.

I’ve went through seasons of obsessive and excessive exercise.

All in the pursuit of finding my happy and “healthy” place.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau

Wow.

What an ah-ha moment reading that was for me!

My answer has really been right in front of me my whole life. I just never saw it for what it was!

I had been looking for something external to “fix it”….to “fix” me.

But, it wasn’t ME that was broken…it was the way I saw myself! (Ok, I was and am a little broken. We’re all a little broken. BUT, I wasn’t broken in the way I thought I was. My weight and my size didn’t make me broken.)

I finally realized it wasn’t about a diet, a pill, a potion, a fad or a quick fix that could FIX me.

It was never about the weight. It wasn’t about the size of my jeans. It wasn’t about doing it all on my own. And, more recently for me, maybe it wasn’t even about being gluten-, sugar-, caffeine-, meat-, alcohol- and chewing gum-FREE.

It was simply about being FREE.

My latest journey to freedom was doing a 21-day detox program and it would turn out to be one of the most life-changing things I’ve done in my journey.

And, you know what? It didn’t change things for me because I lost a few lbs. and inches.

It changed things for me because I DID IT. I conquered something I never would’ve thought I could do. Maybe giving up all those things for 21 days would be a piece of cake for you but for me it was anything BUT. And, it changed things because even though I had thought I had learned how to “ditch the diet” when I started coaching, I realized through this that I’ve been trying to lose weight for the better part of 25 YEARS. I was trying to lose weight back when I really shouldn’t have been trying to!

I’m finally getting to my results and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about them.

But, what I’m really excited about is the next step. I’m excited about my transition now.

Why am I so excited?? Ha, I’m sure you’re thinking, she’s ALWAYS saying she’s excited for her next step!

And, the truth is, I always am!! But, this time is a little different.

Because, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not going to be focusing on losing weight.

And, it’s kinda scary ‘cuz it goes against everything I’ve ever known.

AND, it.already.feels.wonderful!

I’m going to be doing something called reverse dieting while following macros. I’ll be sharing more about it in the coming weeks but the long and short of it is, my next season will be uncharted territory for me. I’m going to be spending the next several months repairing my metabolism and continuing to repair my body image. It’s a time to focus solely on getting stronger. If I were to keep trying to lose body fat at this point, eventually my calories would be so low that it would be very counter-productive for my body. So, for the next several months, I will be slowly increasing my calories and probably even gaining a little weight back.

And, the best part of it is for me means that I’m not going to be giving up anything. My brain just doesn’t do well with deprivation. I wouldn’t change what I did these past 3 weeks and my body feels amazing right now, BUT I will say I was very close to binge behavior and I didn’t like that feeling at all.

So, no more guilt what-so-ever for having a diet coke here and there. No more guilt for having some candy. No more guilt for eating a cupcake. #everythinginmoderation. I’m starting to lean more towards stress being the reason my stomach was all out of whack early last year and why I had so many weird things going on this past year. And, while I always thought it was part of it, I don’t think I realized just how much until I started to come through some of the stress, depression and anxiety and how I had already been starting to feel so much better.

Ha, okay this is turning into a marathon blog post! See what happens when I don’t finish a post every day?!? Sorry guys!

And, now…here are the detox results!

The almost 18 inches overall #hadmelike YAY! I know some of this is water weight but it feels amazing! And, I even lost from my legs, arms and chest ~ not just my abs area. And, my skin is GREAT!!! I’m sleeping GREAT!!! So glad I did this!

And, NOW, I’m so glad to be getting back to my workouts and giving macros another shot but in a different way. I found a lot of clarity these past few months and I have more knowledge and more support than I’ve had when I’ve tried it in the past. I thought I’d share the cover photo in one of my support groups ~ Eat. In. Peace. #yesthatsthegoal And, yet, again, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Even when it comes to an unhealthy relationship with yourself and with food. #foodfreedom #eatinpeace