I’ve been thinking endlessly about what to write in this post. I’ve been beating myself up for putting some weight back on. It has to stop. (the weight gain, and the self-abuse!) Yes, I’ve let some of my good habits slip, but since August I’ve also gone from nursing Bad every 3-4 hours, day AND night, to one bedtime love and milk-fest. I think my body was using a lot of extra calories to keep him fed, and I didn’t think to adjust my intake accordingly when I started laying down the nursing law.
I’ve watched my mom struggle with her weight my entire life, but she has gotten down to a healthy weight by eating well, and she’s been swimming and walking several times a week. She looks amazing – yay Mom! Both of my maternal grandparents were overweight. I’ve watched all four of my siblings lose and gain weight over the years. My mom’s sister was morbidly obese for decades. About 5 years ago she had a gastric bypass and got down to a size 14 (she’s 5’11). She has had terrible side effects, and still vomits weekly, if not daily, and her resulting malnutrition has caused her to suffer memory loss and blackouts. Yet, despite what seems to me a horrible outcome from the surgery, she has told my mom with complete sincerity that she would rather die than gain back the weight. I refuse to go down that path. I am genetically predisposed to weight gain. I will not allow myself to use that as an excuse. I can be the ‘skinny’ one in the family, but I have to give up the illusion that I will ever be able to let my guard down. I need to make a conscious and continued commitment to my body and my health.
This doesn’t mean dieting. It doesn’t mean joining a gym and performing innumerable repetitions of mind-numbing exercises. I lost the weight without taking drastic or horrible measures, and I can keep it off doing the same things. I just have to remind myself to make them a habit again, and why it’s so important.
1. Water before coffee – I know, all the experts tell you to drink 8 glasses a day, but that’s hard and I have to go pee enough as it is. I’m sure that more is better, but if I drink a big glass when I first get up, and one glass before or with lunch and one glass before or with dinner, it’s enough to make a difference.
2. Treat cheese as a condiment or garnish, not the main component of every other meal.
3. Eat what I really want to eat. I couldn’t survive on a low-carb diet. I’d be fainting within 2 days. That said, I’m picky about those carbs. Does anyone REALLY enjoy Wonder bread? I keep homemade muffins in the freezer, buy fresh bakery bread, and have even discovered that you can make up a batch of biscuits or scones, roll them out, then freeze them individually and bake them up straight from frozen when needed. A fresh hot scone with strawberry jam, or dry plastic toast-bread for breakfast….what are you really going to enjoy?
4. Plain non-fat yogurt. Learn to love it.
5. Homemade soup. Maybe because it’s low-cal, maybe because it ups my liquid intake, maybe because I love it; I’m not sure what it is, but the more I make this part of my diet, the easier my weight is to maintain.
6. Eat what I really want to eat. I’m the one planning and shopping and cooking. I need to stop trying to please Hubs and the kids. They can always have bread and fruit and yogurt, and they should learn to eat better anyway.
7. Exercise with my kids. I really want to start running again, but Hubs is never going to make the commitment to help me, so I need to just accept that. Once the boy is sleeping through the night and I can be reasonably sure that I can get up and run and get home before he wakes up and destroys the house while Hubs snores obliviously on, then I can run. Until then, we walk places. We run around at the park. And we’ll be going swimming once a week all winter.
8. Plan. Cook big batches of that soup, those muffins, so there is always something in the freezer that I want to eat.
I need to keep things in perspective. Yes, my jeans have gotten tight, but I couldn’t even pull these jeans ON last January, things are not so bad.
Anything I’ve forgotten? Leave me your tips, I’m always glad of help and inspiration!
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7 comments:
You can mix flavoured applesauce in with the plain yogurt for a change. No sugar, just fruit. Sweetens it up, though, naturally.
Good luck!
No extra tips but I always find that when I'm losing post-baby, the being prepared thing is most important. I find if I chop up some vege sticks and have them in the fridge I will go and snack on those, whereas, when they're not there, well, bad stuff happens.
Sounds like you're doing all the right stuff. You will regain control of this. Trust me.
I think it's sort of a cycle was all go through no matter how fit we are. I run a lot and have been stuggling with my weight again a bit cuz of my eating. Thank you so much for the great post and you're not out there alone. There are armies of us moms just trying to stay fit and healthy :)
I've stopped weighing myself and am just trying to focus on fitness and health.
Ooh, you know what I like now? A kid video game system called "Go Go Tv." My toddler and I play the breaking bricks game and popping the balloons game and I end up SWEATING. The key is to jump and flail crazily so that you are not only playing with your child, you're burning calories.
Good luck. May this be a new way of life for you. And I totally agree: Keep anything you don't LOVe out of your mouth. Don't waste calories on food you don't care for!
I like your plans.
I actually stopped reading your post as soon as you started talking about water, went into the kitchen and drank some, and then came back to read more.
You have a solid plan and a good mental attitude -- I'm certain you'll be successful.
Good luck with your journey. I've recently started back at Weight Watchers, and the main things that I need to do is incorporate more veggies as snacks and Water, Water, Water!!
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