So I’ve decided that I am taking a slightly different approach to sharing my weekly weigh-ins and weight loss journey with you all “post baby”. I will be honest and tell you that I have wayyyyy more weight to lose than what is “typical” and even though I knew it was coming, it’s a difficult pill to swallow, having success at losing all of that weight and “kept it off,” because you would think I would have “known better.” I am somewhat embarrassed for that reason because I allowed it to get out of control during the pregnancy and decided I would “deal with it after the baby comes.” So for now, until I’ve made a big dent in it, I’ve decided to keep it to myself.
As I committed, I wasn’t going to put any effort into it until 6 weeks post partum and when that day came, I was ready to take baby steps. I stepped on the scale, wrote down the number and that was that. Instead of thinking that I already”knew” how to do it like I had before, I really took the time to think about what made me successful. When I drove the scale down from 298 lbs, I weighed in once each and every week without fail, without excuse and without emotion. No matter if the scale had a huge loss or stayed the same, or a gain, I didn’t let it affect how I felt. To me it was science and nothing more. Don’t get me wrong, I smiled and celebrated my losses, but I didn’t let it go beyond the few minutes it took to record my loss and move on with my new week. I stuck to my allotted WW POINTS and it worked. It was that simple. And perhaps just as significantly, I had lost half of the weight on my own before blogging about it and before putting myself “out there” like I do now.
There is not only accountability with putting it all out there, but also pressure. So, I’ve decided that since I obviously have my hands full with my beautiful baby boy who literally has my hands tied 24/7, I didn’t want to feel like I was “falling behind” blogging my weigh-ins every week etc., so I decided that while I will most likely be posting about it on a fairly regular basis, I was going to set a simple standard for myself that I could easily comply with until I felt ready to handle more.
1. Take a pen and paper and track my food and add up the calories each day. Simple and obvious. Yes a good ol’ pen and paper. It’s faster than trying to keep it all online, especially if the NI is on the package and I have a kitchen scale. Even though my computer is always nearby, it is difficult to get the opportunity to type. My little one is not one of those babies that you can just put down and will fall asleep when he’s tired and be content on his own and that’s just how he’s wired, so I keep it right on the kitchen counter and since I’m home pretty much 24/7, it works. For those items that don’t have a NI, I easily look it up online. I use a huge notebook with plenty of room to write and make corrections. I frequently make changes and hate feeling like I’m running out of room, so this helps me not let running out of room become a reason not to document!
2. I aim between 1800-2100 calories per day and don’t sweat it if I go over. And I mean it, I’m not bothered by it. In fact, I go over it most days and so far so good 🙂 All hail the extra breastfeeding calories!
3. Eat if I’m hungry, no matter what, after all, I am providing a food source for another human being and eating well and enough is more important right now than losing weight – period.
4. Step on the scale every Friday (not before and not after) and note the number at the top of my notebook for that day and calculate the result.
5. Tweet the result with the hash tag #ByeByeBabyWeight ! Surprisingly, I appear to be the only person on Twitter using this tag, so it serves as a great tracker! That serves as my accountability because it’s quick and easier than committing to blog each and every week and it’s doable no matter what! I may still blog every week or as often as I am able, but if not, I don’t need to sweat it, because I’ve already taken care of that 🙂
So there you have it, that’s my plan of attack at this point in time and so far I’m down 3.6 lbs 🙂
I will leave you with the many adorable faces of my little prince (who is 8 weeks old today!) as we went out for our first “real” walk together Wednesday where he made it almost the 30 minutes content before deciding it was over :-D:
Thank you to Shirls for his adorable sweater that her Mom made for our little Peanut that he wears wherever we go outside! I will have to get a better picture where his harness isn’t covering it!
