Monday, May 5, 2008

2 away!


I gained FAR too much weight when I was pregnant. I'll finally put it down in black and white... I gained 50 pounds. According to "Babycenter.ca" I should have gained only 20 based on my height and pre-pregnancy weight.

It's no wonder people were asking me if I was carrying twins!!!! Looking back at photos of myself near the end, I wonder how I even made it up the stairs!! The fact that it was 75% belly added to the strangely distorted can't-tell-you're-pregnant-from-the-back look I had going on. I wish I had found out about my gestational diabetes sooner. I would have nixed the constant love-ins with multiple Ben & Jerry's pints before they had a chance to spiral out of control.

Alas, what happened, happened, and I can't erase it (nor can I erase the angry village of purple stretch marks which have made their mark on my abdomen)but I can change myself now. And I have.

A few days after I got home from the hospital, I weighed myself for the first time sans-fetus. I had already lost 25 pounds! Having a person taken out of you will do that, I guess ;) And the next 10 pounds came off in the next few weeks. (When you're a new mom, lunch isn't your biggest priority. I had to remind myself to eat!) But I was still carrying around 15 pounds MORE than I had before I got pregnant. So I decided to lose the weight. I exercised my butt off for a few weeks, but unfortunately since I was no longer a diabetic, sweets weren't technically off limits, so multiple candy bars waltzed into my mouth on a regular basis. I was sabotaging my own work. In the process, I had lost 5 pounds more, but I was still 10 pounds heavier then I was when I conceived. I fell into a slump. I was depressed and unmotivated.

Then, something happened. I looked in the mirror one morning and said to that chubby girl, "NO MORE. I can change myself. I CAN lose weight. And I'm going to do it."

March 10th, I went on a diet. A STRICT diet. My goal: to lose 20 pounds in 2 months. If I could keep with the diet for 2 months, I could lose the weight. And I'd be 10 pounds lighter than I was pre-pregnancy. A weight I hadn't been at in over 6 years. A girl I knew had started the same diet 2 months earlier, and she'd lost JUST the amount of weight I wanted to lose. I had my goal in sight. D-day is May 10th.

As you can tell, that 2 month mark is coming up this Saturday, the day before Mother's day. And I'm proud to announce that I'm now 2 pounds away from my goal!!!!!!

Things don't fit quite the same, now, and the army of angry stretch marks still parties it up on my belly every day, but I'm elated nonetheless. SO happy that I stuck with it, so happy that I didn't give up on myself.

And I'll continue until the 10th. I know I can reach my goal, and it feels AWESOME!

1 comment:

  1. WAY TO GO!!!!!!!!!! I can remember my own "Vision in the Mirror" moment too and I didnt even have the wonderful excuse of having a baby!! You can do whatever she sets your mind to! I have a goal as well - I want 10 lbs off before Europe ... the quit smoking weight .., lets see if I too can resist my downfall ... I'm a carboholic :(

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