It seems to be a theme I'm seeing a lot here lately from other people I know: weight loss. Yes, yes, that again. If you aren't thinking about it yourself, I bet you know someone who is. I "successfully" managed to gain a whopping 78 pounds from the time I got pregnant with my first child until after the birth of my third. Yikes! B.C. (that's Before Children) I didn't worry much over my weight. I wasn't skinny by any means but I was at a healthy weight for my height and bone structure. That's not to say I didn't have moments back in my thin days when I didn't wish away what I considered my "thunder thighs" or my slight pooch in my belly. I look back at my thin self and think "Why in the heck didn't you get on a treadmill or something a few times a week? That would have firmed up those jiggly thighs (which I realize now were trim and nice) and maybe we wouldn't be in the position we are currently in!" But, that's another conversation for me and my thin counterpart.
In between babies, I would lose some weight and then regain, you know the cycle I'm sure. After Tyler's birth and when I realized just how high my weight had gotten, I decided something must be done. So we bought an elliptical and I started making a much more concerted effort toward losing weight. This time I hoped to actually lose and keep off the weight I had gained over the years since our intention is to not have anymore children. I actually did really well. I simply took control over my eating instead of doing that without thinking and I exercised every weekday. I ended up losing 30 pounds! I was beyond thrilled. And then...Christmas came. The season of holly and candy canes, of wreaths and sugar cookies, of nativities and fudge, of turkey and pie. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. I just can't in good conscience deny myself the treats of the holiday season. I know, my conscience should be screaming "STEP AWAY FROM THE COOKIES!" but hey, apparently at that time of year my stomach and my conscience battle it out and my conscience is left to limp away and lick it's wounds until after the new year. Anyway, it probably wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I let the exercising slip during the week that my husband was off work over Christmas. Getting back into that after the season was over became such a challenge, not to mention the fact that my conscience apparently went into rehab or something for its injuries because my eating never really got back under control, which resulted in my weight loss, which had become a weight maintain before Christmas hit, gradually reversing itself until before I knew it, I had gained back 20 pounds! Yes, I'm ashamed to admit that, actually. I had lost so much and then to gain most of it back was very discouraging. And once that had happened, it was so difficult for me to start trying again because I was now so down on myself over it all.
I was able to restart my workouts to an extent by changing the time I did them to early morning. When I did that, during the school year, I really liked how it worked out. But it seemed like every time I would get on a good groove with my exercising, I would get sick or the kids would get sick or something would happen that would disrupt my routine, making it either impossible to exercise or giving me really good excuses for skipping it. When summer hit, I decided that I was going to really get back into things and one way I would try to make that happen was to walk outside instead of on the elliptical. I hoped that changing the scenery a little would help motivate me to get out there. But June was just a crazy month for us with sports camp for Riley that started earlier in the day than we were used to being ready by, even during the school year, following immediately by our vacation to Disney World, which was followed by a visit from my sister and then a quick trip to Pennsylvania for a family reunion. Once we were back from all of that, I then had the excuse that I was so tired from everything we had been doing, I deserved a week of not worrying about it. Thankfully during all those times (at least the times we were home) I had my mom, who is trying to get back into an exercise routine, and who is walking outside early in the mornings three days a week to motivate me to get out there even if it wasn't every day. So I've still been walking some, but on the days that she and I don't have plans to meet up and walk, I am still having a terrible time getting myself to get up and exercise. Not having anything pressing to do in the mornings, like get the kids off to school, makes it very hard for me to get out of bed until I absolutely have to.
There are two things that I think are really going to help me with all of this though. One thing is school restarting in a few weeks. When I know I'm going to have to get up and get the kids going, I won't be as likely to put off exercising (I hope). Also I have discovered this website that seems to be pretty popular right now called myfitnesspal.com. It counts calories for you and has a huge database of food for you to enter into a daily food diary to keep track of those calories. I've never been huge on counting calories on my own but when I saw the site I decided to just use it as a food diary. I had really liked that about Weight Watchers when I used that years ago because I felt like I was less likely to eat something when I wasn't actually hungry when I knew I would be writing that thing down later. It just gave me some good accountability. And that is what I wanted to use myfitnesspal for as well. I wasn't going to worry about the calories. But it didn't take me very many days of using it for me to start getting in to keeping my calorie number from turning red. And since I started using that tool about two weeks ago, I've lost some weight. It's either one or three pounds depending on how you look at it. I ended up gaining a couple of pounds after my first weigh in entry when I joined the site and I've now lost three pounds from that higher weight. But I didn't enter the higher weight in to the site (I refused on principle) so the site only shows that I've lost one pound. But I know the truth, sad though it may be, and now you do too. Don't tell myfitnesspal though.
So I hope to continue walking with my mom three days a week until it gets too dark at that time of morning for us to be comfortable walking then, and I do want to use my elliptical the other two days of the week if I can roll myself out of bed. But my hope is that it'll fall into place easier for me after school starts. At this point if I can just lose the weight I had gained back before the upcoming holiday season, I would be thrilled with that. I feel for all of you out there who are in the same boat I am in. I just hope this boat doesn't sink before we can all lose some of our weight!
1 comment:
Been there done that, my sister. I'm still there and doing it. At least you didn't have to start dealing with this in junior high! Remember all those times I would go out and walk with Momma while you sat inside and read? Now you're welcome to my world. :) haha I'm also hoping that with the beginning of school comes my motivation. Yesterday our babysitters baked a cake while they were here. That's not going well at all. It will definitely be gone by the time school rolls around though so I'll work it off then. :) I will join myfitnesspal with you. And I promise not to tell them about your weight gain if you promise not to tell them about the cake.
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