I’m not naturally a thin or “fit” woman.  That may come as a shock when seeing how I am in *this* particular picture, but pretty much all my life I’ve struggled with being able to gain weight extremely easily.  The benefit of that has been finding multiple ways to make it easier to maintain a good shape and keep healthy though!  According to my sweet 1/2 Polish, 1/2 Irish grandmother, for the women in our family, it was normal to gain weight with pregnancy, and then just never manage to get control over it after that.  Being very overweight after having kids was just accepted for them… but not really.  It wasn’t accepted emotionally… and definitely not with any kind of happiness.  In a major way, it’s like living defeated.

My mom was so good about letting me know how hard it was to live with excess fat on your…