This is my first post on the Getting in Shape board. As I'm just over a month out from my wedding (11.15.14), I'm starting to really freak out about looking the way I want to look on our big day. Some background -- I've been overweight my whole life. The majority of my family is overweight (and always has been), and I just never developed healthy eating/exercising habits. My freshman year of college, I weighed in at over 200 pounds at a doctor's appointment. At 5'3", that felt significant for me, and it was a "light bulb" moment. I radically changed my eating habits and started exercising 7 days a week. I also was not in a relationship/on birth control, nor was I drinking alcohol. I lost 80 pounds over the course of about a year. I was able to maintain that weight loss through the rest of college, and I was REALLY small. In retrospect, my body probably couldn't sustain the weight that I had reached (115 lbs -- my body seems to naturally be more comfortable around 120 - 128, which I'm totally fine with).
Fast-forward to my post-college life. I met my FH two weeks after graduation, we fell in love, were wining and dining out all the time, went on birth control which caused some weight gain, exercise became less of a priority in favor of spending time together...we're all familiar with the story.
Since we met, I've gained 15 - 20 pounds. I'm still working out as regularly as I can (I try for 5 days a week, but I feel like I'm always so tired and unmotivated) and watching what I eat, but I have a stressful career and limited time, so I'm still eating out more than I'd like to, drinking more regularly in social situations (advertising...happy hours galore), and I'm not in the physical shape that I thought I would be for my wedding. With all of the stress of the wedding planning itself (difficulties with my mom in the planning process, the stress of everything coming together, making sure we're checking things off the list, developing anxiety, etc.), I feel like I'm at a breaking point. As a girl who has been bigger all her life, lost a lot of weight, then gained some of it back, I guess it's hard for me to look in the mirror and be truly happy with where I am. I don't want to be disappointed in myself on our wedding day, or look back at photos and hate how I look in them. But I also don't want my life to revolve around counting every single calorie and working out like a crazy person. I'm so preoccupied with all eyes being on me, and people potentially judging me for being bigger than I used to be (I know that's silly and irrational, as the people attending will be people who love me). And I'm not worried about what FH thinks -- I know he'll think I look beautiful no matter what. My worries seem to center on my own skewed opinion of myself. Maybe I just got really burnt out the first time I lost all that weight. I'm not sure.
Apologies for the long post -- I think I'm just wondering if any of you lovely ladies have been/are in the same position, and any action that you took to re-motivate and re-energize yourselves? I'd really appreciate any words of advice/commiseration/encouragement that anyone might have.