COOKIES!!!

I have been SOOOOO bad this past week!  I had lost 4 pounds last month during the first phase of my 90-day day Beachbody challenge, and I am pretty certain I put them all back on... I am afraid to find out.  My clothes still fit the same, but I feel TERRIBLE!!

I had been feeling great until all the stresses of the last two weeks caught up with me.  Darn you, stress-eating!  I have never been quite the victim of stress-eating as I have been these last two weeks.  I have been revolving around those darn fundraiser cookies.  So I cooked up the rest of them today, and what doesn't get eaten by my family is going straight into the trash!  It is sooo disgusting!  I used to eat like this ALLL the time!  I don't remember feeling this gross... although, I do remember being this depressed... I am certain it's related.  And to top it off, I missed three workouts over the past two weeks, and I am feeling it!

I need something different.  I feel like trying a strictly whole food, plant-based diet... not added oil or sugar...  ONLY good things!  Granted, we are mostly plant-based, but we sure do pack on the non-dairy butter, and eat a TON of things cooked with oil.  Anyway,  until I can find an appropriate balance I really feel my body BEGGING me to go back to the basics... at the least, I hear it begging me to stop eating all those stinkin' cookies!

Moving on...

As a mom, I struggle to find my individuality.  I have been feeling so run-down lately, and while a lot of the physical run-down-ness is due to my poor diet choices, the rest is simply because I feel like I am falling short in everything I am trying to accomplish.  I find myself basing my success on someone else's health or mood.  The best I can do or give simply isn't good enough, even though it is.  My success cannot be measured be the way things around me are running... but that is how I see it.  If my house is a mess, so is my mind; if my kids are sick, so is my spirit; if Spencer is upset, it's all my fault.  I struggle finding a way to keep myself together if everything around me is falling apart.  Who am I?  I know I am a wife, a mom, a daughter, and a sister; but where did Ashley go?  I used to have so many interests, opinions, and hobbies that had nothing to do with family...  not that I miss those by any means, but I feel like I haven't replaced things with my own stamp yet.

I am a wife and a mother first, for sure. But I think it is time the fun bubbly Ashley come out every once in a while. Just for sanity's sake. That is all...