Former journalist, Sarah Lane, of Lexington is May’s Mom of the Month!

Sarah, mom to 2 year old “J” lives in Lexington and works in Communications and Advertising. Below, Sarah bravely shares her experiences of struggling with her weight post baby. Check out her inspirational story below, we are sure you’ll be moved by her honesty. Some of the Baby in the Bluegrass team will be accepting her challenge. Will you?

I am struggling to come to grips with a bad word that has worked itself into my everyday vocabulary. It shares some of the shock value of the four-letter mainstays, but it only has three letters. Ready? Here we go. It’s F-A-T. (Insert obligatory shudder.) There, I’ve said it. Spelled it out, in fact. I think about F@! in some capacity at least 72.5 times a day. How I became F@!. How I don’t want my family to be F*^. How I am tired of F#@. Disguising it with keyboard symbols as I would other bad words doesn’t even hide the level of awful contained in this word.

Sarah and "J" at 10 months old

My problem with Fat doesn’t stem from a distorted body image, nor an over-exposed-to-media sense of vanity. It roots itself in truth. Truth, coupled with a desire to eradicate it from my life. I want to be healthy. Even more than that, I want my two-year-old son, J, to grow up normally, eating healthfully, and having the energy we expect kids to have—running, jumping, climbing, crawling, reaching, hopping, spinning, chasing, exploring—just plain having fun. So far, he’s well within the normal weight range for an average two-year-old, and so far, I’ve been able to keep up with him. But just barely, and certainly not without a lot of huffing, puffing and panting.

My very independent J playing outside

How did I get this way? Quite simply, I ate too much, and didn’t exercise enough. Oh sure, we can go deeper than that, and explore pregnancy, where I gained a little too much weight; post-pregnancy where apparently, I kept eating like a pregnant woman; a metabolism which has suddenly put on the skids; and most problematic of all, some medical issues, which through the prescribed use of steroids, really packed on the pounds. That last part has obviously been out of my control. I listed it last for a reason though, because there are plenty of things that have been within my control.

Apparently, I am not alone. Statistics show that more than half of you reading these words are at least overweight, if not downright fat.

Between the over-produced ads for giant mouth-watering bacon cheeseburgers, pizza and other sugar-rich, carb-loaded, grease-laden fare (all cleverly engineered by food scientists), are the news stories, documentary features, and reality television shows, which are painting one ugly picture: America is fat, and getting fatter. The Center for Disease Control cites data from the 2007-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which basically says 17% of kids and teens ages 2-19 are fat. The increases within sub-sets of that survey are just as upsetting. For example, a couple of decades ago, only 5% of kids ages 2-5 were fat; today, that number has more than doubled.

The picture may be grim, but let me make this clear—the paint has not dried. We still have the brushes in hand, and plenty of palettes that can replace the ones we’ve been using.

The change begins with me. With you. With the people whose lives we may be able to touch for the better in some small way.

Let’s do this. Together. Want to join me?