Baby Weight Loss Failure

Ok.  So, here's where I sit down, take a deep breath, and admit a really hard thing - I totally failed at losing weight after my baby was born.

I lost less than 10 pounds after my delivery of EH, which was a disappointing percentage of the 34 pounds that I had gained.  But, over the next couple of week, most of it melted away.  Between breastfeeding and being so sleep deprived that I was eating really poorly, that early weight loss came fairly easily.  At 5 weeks post-partum I had lost 17 pounds, or half of the weight I had gained.

By 6 months or so I weighed in at 153!!! Awesome right??? Except that as of today, I weigh 162.5 which is nearly 10 pounds up from that 153 mark.  So where did things do wrong?

As I mentioned above, in those early weeks with a newborn - we'll say months 0 through 3 - feeding your child and getting him to sleep is what you spend 95% of your time doing.  That leaves very little time for something like feeding yourself, unless you have someone taking care of that for you, and I did not.  I believe that the world is divided into two groups - those who chose to eat, and those who chose to sleep.  When and if deprived of both food and sleep, which would you chose?  I always choose sleep, and I am sure that in those days my calories in were far less than my calories out, which is the perfect formula for weight loss.

During months 3 to 6 I think that the sleep thing gets much better for a lot of people.  But in our case, EH was very very sick during those three months, because of all of the illnesses and infections he was getting from day care.  Even though I was back at work full time by this point, I still spent many, many nights awake with EH, rocking him to sleeping, giving him antibiotics and trying to suck the snot from his nose with those bulb things so that he could attempt to breathe.  It was awful.  I was too overwhelmed to cook most of the time and once again, I was losing weight simply because I was choosing to sleep instead of eat whenever I could.  That's how I got down to 153.

Then we pulled EH out of day care and he started going to A-Care (a woman watching him in her own home.)  This was a turning point in his health and his development, as he was finally able to start catching up developmentally with other 6 month olds, something he couldn't do when he was sick for 3 months.  He started eating better and sleeping better and this finally meant that things started to get on a somewhat normal schedule for us.

After over 6 months of feeling that I never had a moment to breathe, I took full advantage of this change!  I started cooking dinners again (although somewhat reluctantly, even now) and once EH was asleep for the night, we started soaking up the quiet time by sitting in the living room and having a drink or a snack.  It was soooo nice to enjoy a Blue Maui and just not do anything. I loved it.

And that really became our routine.  We started going out to eat more frequently and an evening libation was just part of the schedule.  Of course, having a drink in the evening isn't a bad thing, but honestly sometimes I would have two or three, and I wasn't eating very well and you better believe I was NOT exercising at all.

That's how it snuck up on me.  Slowly.  An ounce here, a half pound there.  I wasn't weighing myself regularly and so I wasn't keep tabs on things, but I started to notice that my pre-pregnancy clothes still didn't fit right (and many will never fit right again anyway, stupid hips.)

So here I am - with a nearly 14 month old baby and 12.5 pounds of "baby" weight still hanging on, mostly in my stomach region.

And today is when I start making changes.

Life with a toddler hasn't gotten any easier, and there are still way too many things to juggle and get everything done, but some things need to become priority now, and the main thing is exercising.

My goal is to work out at least 3 times per week for 45 minutes - that's basically one TV episode without commercials on HULU.  4 times would be ideal though.  At least one night needs to be spent picking up and/or cleaning the house, and the other two nights can be at our discretion (many weekends we'll be traveling so there's no sense in scheduling those days for a particular activity - that would just guarantee failure.)

I am going the painfully embarrassing route of telling the world how much I weigh so that you can cringe with me now and cheer me on in a few months when I come back to "weigh in" - hopefully with a much MUCH lower number.  I am not proud of my failed attempt to lose my baby weight, but I am proud of my myself for admitting it publicly and vowing to make a change and I hope that within a few weeks I'll have positive news to share.  I've battled these demons before, and I know I can do it again with a little willpower!

Today is Wednesday, but I've already successfully worked out two times this week, so I am off to a good start.  Let's just hope it continues!