Post Baby Body

I'm back!

It'll be 4 weeks tomorrow since I had my baby boy. He was 9 lbs. 6 oz. and we named him Lincoln.

I love the immediate loss of almost 20 lbs. However, I am fairly certain I am now at the point where I have to work to get the rest of the weight gain off. I am nursing, so that will help, but that alone won't get me to where I was pre-pregnancy. I need to lose just over 20 lbs. to reach that point. That won't get me to where I need to be though. That weight was where I was after my miscarriage last summer, the baby weight from that I never bothered to attempt to work off--I padded it and my emotions with Blue Bell Ice Cream instead.

So now I am ready to start losing more of this weight. When and how still remains a slight mystery. I have my beloved exercise DVDs, but now I have 4 kids ages 5 and under. Any suggestions?

I feel like I should write down specific goals instead of just a blanket goal of "losing weight." So here they are.
By Christmas. . .
1. I want to be down to 145 lbs.
2. I want to be comfortably wearing my non-maternity shirts.
3. I want to be down one jeans size.

To do this I will . . .

1. Not eat after 9:30 PM (I know I shouldn't eat after 7 or something, but I'm being realistic here. Every time I nurse I snack, so that means I'm snacking all day and all night long, even at 3 AM).

2. Ride my exercise bike for 15 minutes (doesn't have to be consecutive) after taking my oldest daughter to school, but before my oldest son goes to school.

3. Workout to either my walking video or pilates video 2X a week, and try to work up to 3X a week.

So there it all is.  Sorry, this was a lot of thinking out loud for me, but I'm hopeful it will help.

Quick Check In

I know I haven't posted in forever. I think in my last post I said my new goal was to just not gain too much weight with my pregnancy.

Well, last week I had a doctor appointment and he surprised me by saying that I was spot on for where I should be with my weight gain. It had been five weeks since I'd seen him last and I'd gained five pounds. This was very surprising since I'd spent a lot of time in those five weeks sitting on my butt in a car driving out to Utah and eating junk food to stay awake. I guess I worked it off hiking at Arches.

Something I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not, I've been told a few times recently that people can't tell I'm pregnant. So does that mean I'm not showing much (which I know can't be the answer) or they just figured I am fatter than I really am? I don't know.

My ward got a nice shock when I left for vacation wearing regular jeans and came back wearing maternity clothes. That was kind of funny. I hadn't announced the pregnancy, so most people didn't know at all until I showed up with my belly sticking out.

Anyway, just wanted to share that I'm doing well with my goal of watching my weight this pregnancy and not letting myself get too caught up in the whole "eating for two" idea.

Good Reasons

So. . . I've been MIA for a while, I know. There's a good reason for that. I've been avoiding you all because I'm up almost ten pounds. But there's a good reason for that, too. I'm expecting baby #4 in October.

So now the goal is to not balloon out like I did with the other three and gain too much weight.

I would like to copy Tristi's goal of salad for lunch and dinner. I don't think I can do the dinner though. I could do the lunch, but every night I have to show my kids how to eat their food. That kind of requires me to eat the same thing they are having. My kids hate to eat--they'd much rather run around the dinner table while singing and dropping their food to the floor.

I will still try to exercise as often as possible, which isn't much. But now that it's warmer outside I'm going to try to incorporate walks into our days.

Goal #1: Eat a salad every day for lunch
Goal #2: Go for walks with the kids every week
Goal #3: Don't balloon out and gain 60 pounds with this pregnancy