With Mommy Makeover nearly to its midway point, Christina Artrip recently found herself falling back into her old habits.

“It’s been rough,” she said. “Changing your lifestyle is not that easy. It was at first but when we started going to places and doing things, it became harder.”

She said the most difficult part was trying to plan healthy meals for her family’s busy lifestyle. Most recently, her family was gone for the entire weekend after one of her sons started BMX racing.

She packed a cooler a food with bread, lunch meat, fruit, water and chips.

“When that was all gone, the bag of chips came out,” she said. “It was hard because my kids and husband were eating that in front of me. So, I fell back and started eating that again.”

She was lucky though and did not gain back any weight.

In addition to indulging in some junk food, Artrip has found herself snacking at night, after everyone else went to bed.

“I wasn’t eating as much when we were on the run and was hungry at night,” she admitted. “So I have to start that again. Once I started eating the junk food, I wanted the junk food. That was all from just a few days of cheating.”

Eating the unhealthy food didn’t do her any favors either.

Artrip said she didn’t have the energy to do much of anything when she took a few days off from her healthier diet.

“I could tell the difference between the junk food and the healthy food I was eating,” she said. “The diet is definitely a very important part of living healthy and having energy to exercise.”

As far as exercising, Artrip has only fallen back on her daily walks and that’s been mainly due to the heat.

Early in the morning, she just doesn’t have the energy to walk. As the day goes on, it becomes too hot for her to take her three children outside for a walk.

She still makes it a point to attend the bootcamp class at the Cass County Family Y at least two days a week and work out to a video at home once a day. She felt it was important to at least burn all the extra calories she might have taken in.

“I wanted to at least even it out,” she said. “Even if wasn’t losing weight, I didn’t want to gain it.”

Despite her hard work and dedication early on, Artrip said she is still not getting her weight down to where she would like it to be.

“I’m frustrated,” she said.

Artrip is at a point where she wishes she could follow a diet to lose weight quickly and just work hard to keep it off.

She also said losing weight has been difficult because she is still breastfeeding, which won’t allow her to cut any calories or nutrition.

While breastfeeding, she is actually supposed to have a higher calorie intake.

After each child, Artrip usually breastfeeds for at least one year. With her oldest son, she was back to normal after one year. After her second child, she became pregnant while breastfeeding and wasn’t able to return to her pre-pregnancy weight.

Artrip also feels she needs to change her sleep habits, since she is not getting enough sleep. She’s been trying to take more naps.

The lack of sleep has been affecting her stress level, which is not helpful when trying to lose weight.

While the Mommy Makeover participant is almost halfway through the program, she has lost almost half of her end goal. She’s even starting to tone up too.

“I’m hoping if I step it up a notch and throw in an extra day of a hard workout and cut out all sugars as before, I will be able to reach my goal,” she said.

Since her setback, Artrip has come to a realization.

“I know what I need to do,” she said. “I need to work out more and eat better.”

• Denise Massie is a staff writer at the Pharos-Tribune. She can be reached at 574-732-5151 or denise.massie@pharostribune.com