TAP Journey - He's the One

Picking up from where we left off, just a few weeks before leaving for Africa, we started dating again, even hinted at marriage. Africa was INCREDIBLE! All I had dreamt of, and more! All the things I got to see and experience while I was over there was everything I had hoped, and Nick and I had definitely fallen. So romantic, right? Our families wouldn't have been shocked if we would've come back engaged, but we didn't. We got home and 4 days later Nick left to Ohio to sell the rest of the summer. Did the whole long distance thing, I went out and visited him, he came home, and a month later we were engaged. 

We planned a 3 month engagement, just enough time for me to be bangin' on my wedding day! I met some new people who were trainers and they were amazing! I worked out with them 5 mornings a week, I was always sore, didn't miss a workout, and got a lot stronger, but no weight came off. Not because of anything they were or weren't doing, but because I still demanded perfection. When it came to eating, I sabotaged myself. Same cycle, I would eat great half the day, take one bite of something 'not perfect', so then I had the go ahead to eat 'imperfect' the rest of the day because I WAS going to be PERFECT tomorrow. I would literally raid the fridge and pantry before I went to bed and eat whatever because it was going to be my LAST time ever eating it.

Needless to say, the wedding day came and my worst fear came true. I wasn't what I had pictured myself to be. I hated taking pictures and video because I didn't want to see myself. I have never been as upset with myself as when I was looking through my bridal pictures with my photographer a week before the wedding picking out which ones to edit and blow up. Are you kidding?!? I wanted all of them to be thrown away, let alone blow any up so I'd look even bigger!

are you joking me right now? It's been so long since I've looked at these I can't even believe it!

I felt even worse taking pics on the honeymoon because now I had to be in a swim suit, so I resorted to big expression faces so people would hopefully look at that ridiculousness instead of my body. 

ps-putting your hands on your hips totally makes you look thinner...riiiiiiiigghht.

 I know my outfit is to die for...oh my gosh, what was I thinking? Haha glad I can laugh about it now. Anyways, we're married and that solves all my self-doubt and worth issues, right? WRONG! I still felt unworthy of Nick. Not just in the normal, 'how did I get so lucky' or 'what did I ever do to deserve him' ways, like I seriously thought it was some kind of joke everyone was playing on me and there was NO WAY he really wanted to be married to me, like what did I even have to offer? I was extremely insecure in our relationship and NONE of that came from anything Nick did. He was always soooo sweet and kind and complimentary and uplifting and perfect. I put all of those feelings upon myself. I remember our first argument was about 4 months after being married because I was telling him how he didn't want me...makes a lot of sense, I know. Things slowly got better, I shared my health and fitness goals with him, we worked out every day together, and were working together towards those goals but I never looked any different. Now, I would always let him see me eat healthy stuff that was 'allowed', but would sneak everything else and wouldn't let him see me eat anything bad. Anytime we weren't together, I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted. He was getting closer to his goals, but I wasn't. More arguments over me telling him he didn't want me continued to come up every now and then, and I couldn't shake the dishonesty of my eating habits.