Baby Weight

When I gave birth to my son a year and a half ago, I weighed 311 pounds.  When I went home after giving birth, I weighed 284 pounds.  Most of the weight I put on during my pregnancy was baby, placenta, and fluid.  Before conceiving, I was 277 pounds after a 43 pound weight loss in four months.  When I started, I was 320 pounds.

Fast forward 18 months and I can definitely say that losing your baby weight is hard.  While I was breastfeeding, even a slight drop in calories affected my milk supply first.  When I tried to work out, I found I had a hard time nursing because my milk supply was affected by that too.  What's a new mom to do?  I wanted to lose the weight, but the odds seemed stacked against me.  It didn't take long (with the help of the mirena IUD according to my ob/gyn) to not only gain back everything I'd lost in the hospital, but even more weight.  I ballooned up to 325 pounds before I even knew what had happened.

I'm losing the weight again, slowly but surely.  I'm not taking any supplements like I did before (and how I miss them), choosing to work hard on watching my diet and walking a lot instead.  So far I'm down eighteen pounds (and this was when I weighed myself right before my period, when every woman knows you're retaining about three pounds of water) and I don't feel like I'm depriving myself of anything.

My eating plan works because I don't count calories obsessively.  I'm not paying attention to how many calories I eat in a day.  That takes all the fun out of eating and if eating isn't fun...then why bother eating?  However, before I enjoy a tasty dessert or devour a frozen pizza, I look at what the serving size is and how many calories are in that serving.  Is it really worth ingesting 400 calories for a little slice of cake?  Not really.  I'd rather enjoy those 400 calories somewhere else.  I also look at fat content, sodium content, and sugar content.  Sure, something might only have 200 calories, but if it's got 15 grams of fat, then maybe that's not what I want to eat.  I also cut out most of my pop intake (every now and then it's not a big deal and I do drink some diet pop) and try to drink a lot of water.

On Saturday, I eat what I want.  I don't look at calories or serving sizes or any numbers of any kind on Saturday.  If I want a piece of cake, I eat a piece of cake.  If I want a regular Pepsi, I have a regular Pepsi.  And you know what?  I just might mow through a box of chicken nuggets too.  One day to cheat makes the rest of the week bearable.

I also try to walk all the time.  Are there days I don't get my walk in?  Sure there are.  I am a Mom after all.  But walking means I can take my son with me.  Sometimes it means taking him to the park and chasing after him for half an hour before putting his worn out rear end in the stroller and walking some more.

The main thing I have to remember (every single mom should remember this too) is that I will never have the same body that I had before.  My hips aren't the same, my waist isn't the same, my ribs aren't the same.  I carried another person inside my body for nine months and then pushed him into the world.  There's no way to get the exact same body back after that.  You might get close, but you won't have a carbon copy of it.  I'm actually healthier now than I was before 2.0 was born and I have to remember that too.

Losing the baby weight is important.  Don't get me wrong, I want to have a healthy body that fits into clothes I couldn't fit into before.  But the point is a healthy body.  My hips will always be wide.  My ribcage sits a little wider at the bottom now.  But the important thing is that I'm healthy.  I choose to focus on that instead of the number on the scale.