Wow! What a slacker I have been this week!! Not so much with exercise but with blogging. It’s time to post my homework Monday Project and I’m just getting around to it. Yes, that’s me, always waiting for the deadline. In my defense, I have been busy with work and kids. It definitely did not help that my hubby couldn’t come home Wednesday night because the weather was lousy. It was nice here at home though. Well, as nice as it can be in Minnesota in January.
This week we are taking a look back and figuring out why we are here. I definitely know most of the reasons why I am where I am right now. One of them would be the beautiful baby I see swinging across the living room. Relax, he is literally in a swing right now. I have 2 boys and I gained 50+ pounds with each pregnancy. I lost all of the weight with my 1st. I had a pretty active retail job during college and after college. That helped to make it so I didn’t really have to exercise or watch what I was eating too hard to maintain a pretty decent weight. I’ve always been relatively thin, but have always had body issues. Probably doesn’t help that my mom always called me “bubble butt”. She swears it wasn’t because my butt was large, but only because she thought I had a cute little “bubble butt”. haha I guess it’s because she has almost no butt. Her butt is very flat, maybe that’s an effect of aging. I remember even at an age of 7 or so, thinking my thighs were too big. In retrospect, I’ve always had muscular thighs and I think I honestly looked down at that muscle and thought it made my thighs look fat. When I look back at pictures of me at that age, my thighs were definitely NOT big. If only the little me could see the big me now. What would she think?!
So, I gained my 50+ pounds with my first pregnancy and really did very little to lose the weight. I continued to breastfeed when I went back to work, so I’d grab a Slim-fast for breakfast so I’d have breakfast as we dashed out the door. Then I’d grab a Slim-fast for lunch so that I could go pump for the next day. I believe the combination of the Slim-fast, breastfeeding, and going back to my active job helped me lose weight and get me back to where I started, which was about 5-10 pounds heavier than I wanted to be. If only that version of me, could see me know. Yikes!
A couple of years ago, I finally left my retail job for a desk job. That was the beginning of the end. haha I worked at that job for about 6 months and tried to eat right to maintain my weight, but that didn’t work very well. Then I became a SAHM and that combined with TTC baby #2, suffering a miscarriage, and then getting pregnant packed on the rest of the weight. The day before my 2nd son was born, I tipped the scales at about 211 pounds. Yeesh! I remember actually having fears I wouldn’t be healthy enough to actually survive labor and/or not have the strength to push him out. I ended up needing a c-section, so those fears really didn’t matter. I lost 35 pounds right away. It was so nice to see the weight “melt” off without trying, but frustrating that I couldn’t keep the weight loss up because of recovery.
That has what has brought me to today. I’ve lost all of the baby weight that I feel will just “fall” off of my body and now it’s time to do the work on the rest and then tackle the extra weight beyond where I started when I became pregnant a year ago. I hate seeing myself in pictures and refuse to be this size for very long. I want to be happy with how I look and how I feel and I know I have to do some work.
The biggest obstacle I need to overcome is diet. I am such a sweets addict, it’s ridiculous. It’s literally a disease like alcoholism for me, only it deals with food. I have to learn to control that. Food is my major problem/weakness along with portion size. I need to learn self-control. I’ve already seen from this week that I am going to have to start counting calories and/or tracking portion size if I want to see continued results. Exercise will help, but it will not do it alone.
I have my husband on board to do a half marathon with me, which will help motivate me to at the very minimum hop onto the treadmill. Heck, I did my run last night and he didn’t! He has better willpower than me, so I truly think getting him on board for this was the best thing I could have done. I need someone to push me, without being too pushy. Plus, he could stand to lose weight and he knows it. It’s a win-win!
