Hello! Hope y’all are doing well!
I recently filmed a video where I talk about my weight. It was a difficult video for me to make because I know that people are going to judge. However, I think it’s important to talk about weight gain during pregnancy and the difficulty of losing weight. I think a lot of people struggle, like me, with their weight, as I have since I was very young.
A couple of things I addressed in the video, I also want to talk about here. One of those things is why I want to lose weight. I am a very lucky woman to have a partner who never comments or judges me on my weight. I also happen to appreciate my body and think I look very nice and I like my curves. Of course, I think I could look better, but I am fairly happy with the aesthetic appearance of my body as it currently is. However: there are plenty of other reasons to want to lose weight that don’t include looking better, and frankly, while younger me found looking better sufficiently motivational, older me is a lot more self-assured and happens to think she looks quite lovely.
When my daughter was born, I was elated. Immediately as I held her I thought: I want another one. I don’t want to say just yet that I absolutely 100% will have another child, that is a decision that my husband and I will make together, but I would like to be prepared if the answer is yes. Now, some of you who watch my YouTube channel will remember how difficult my pregnancy was. By the end of it, I was having difficulty walking, getting in & out of the car, sleeping, etc, – everything seemed so hard. This was at least in part due to the massive weight gain I had during pregnancy. I got over 200 pounds and my doctor wrote “gestational obesity” on my chart. Big yikes. So, not only was I “borderline” in the gestational diabetes category, I was also obese.
After I gave birth, I was really focused on taking care of my child in her initial weeks of life, and I made all of my decisions with her at the top of my mind. Now that I’m over 3 months postpartum, I have started taking care of me again. I’m back on a regular schedule with my therapist and personal trainer, and I’m going to the gym by myself much more often- I hardly ever went on my own when I was pregnant, and now I go about 1-2x a week. I’m not perfect, not by a long shot- but I’m working to start putting myself first sometimes, so I can be more present for my family.
I really feel like over the last two months, I’ve really gotten my fitness back online. Going to the gym just about every other day, with the exception of this week, being Thanksgiving, since I stayed with relatives Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but I did go to the gym Monday and Saturday. I am not sure whether I’ll be going tomorrow (Sunday, December 1st- UPDATE: I did not go to the gym, but I did go for a walk!), it depends on how I feel. I gave it my all today at the gym, spending an hour with my trainer and logging a personal best on the bench- if you promise not to make fun, I’ll tell you that it was 105, but if you are gonna laugh, pretend you didn’t read that.
Now that I’m doing all this stuff for my body with exercise, and as my weight has slowly come down after having the baby, it’s time to get my food right. I’m going to be focusing on weight loss, and general health. I know I will not be perfect, but I plan to share everything with you, on here, and some on my YouTube channel.
For the purposes of goal-setting and measuring the achievement of those goals, my starting weight and date will be set according to when I first began watching my food- after I had lost the weight of the baby, and much of the accumulated fluid retention I had from the pregnancy.
That said, my start date was Tuesday, November 12th and my starting weight was 185.7. This is the heaviest I’ve ever weighed- it is about 15 pounds heavier than my pre-pregnancy weight. I don’t like putting a number on a goal weight, I find goal weights more ‘de-motivating’ than motivating because it always feels like there is so far to go- even when I’m within ten pounds of my goal. I mean, it’s not like I’ve never been on a diet before! It has been a while though… In any case, I do feel like it’s important to set a goal weight for measurement purposes. So, my goal weight is 148- something I had been able to maintain for years in my 20s- even though, I still did find that difficult. I am not going to delude myself into thinking that I’ll definitely make it there, so I also want to set some fitness goals that will serve as a good measure of health as well as a source of motivation for me.
One fitness goal I have is to get back into running. Now, tell me that this is not just the perfect time… just kidding, it’s a terrible time for this goal given the ever-chilling weather we’ll be having in the approaching winter. However, I’ve been hitting the treadmill and I have a FANTASTIC running program that I am looking forward to starting. This one is meant for all people all ages, they even recommend it to the elderly, so I know I can do it! Also: I have completed the program before. My goal is to get to 30 minutes of uninterrupted jogging. It doesn’t matter how fast, I just don’t want to need to stop or walk at all for 30 minutes.
Another fitness goal I have is to be able to do an unassisted tricep dip. Currently, I do assisted tricep dips, and the weight is set at 100 pounds, sometimes 85- I can kind of do one at that weight. That one is straight forward, so easy to measure. My last fitness goal, for the moment- I reserve the right to add more!- is to be able to do the splits front to back. I used to be able to do this a long time ago, and I had to train for a long time to be able to do it back then, so I anticipate that I’ll have to train a lot to do it this time too, but I am not going to be surprised if I never get there- it’s all about having the goal and the motivation to keep stretching and stay limber.
I also have a goal that involves fitting in a specific item of clothing. There’s this dress. I saw this dress in a fashion magazine a long time ago, it was a part of the Spring/Summer 2012 collection by Rag & Bone. I LOVED this dress when I first saw it. It was beautiful! However, it was $700 and I was not prepared to spend $700 on even the most prettiest of dresses. So, I didn’t buy it. Then, literally last year sometime, it just popped into my head, and I thought I might be able to find it on eBay, and there it was! I got it for $150-ish (new with tags!!!) and when it got to me, it didn’t fit. I really hope to be able to fit in this dress soon!
An idea for a future goal I have is to either get back into yoga, which I currently feel I am not in good enough shape for, I probably could go, but I don’t want to risk injury, which would totally be my fault, since I always feel like I have to keep up with the class when I should probably just go into Child’s pose and wait until I catch my breath from all those Sun Salutations. Another idea for a future goal I have is to get out of my comfort zone and try one of the aerobics classes offered at my gym. I used to love aerobics classes, but I always find those first few times to be the hardest because you have to learn all the dance moves and my misfortunate ass was born with two left feet.
For the wedding, my husband and I hired a choreographer to design and teach a dance to us. It took a lot of effort but we learned it. And every single lesson, she’d be like “wow, you’re doing great!” to my husband and always “Ok, we need to work on some things” to me. It was true. The man has some natural talent. He can’t sing, and I can’t dance, hopefully our daughter inherits our talents and not our shortcomings.
I also have another goal- a content goal- and that goal is to share everything with you. I want to share all my weigh-ins, which weigh-in days are Sundays. I just think that even though I decided to get started on a Tuesday, Sundays are just the best days for me to weigh-in.
Anyways, those are my goals, and my “where I am now”s. I made a video about it on my channel, I’ll link: here if you wanna watch, and I’ll be posting regular updates to this blog and a few updates here & there to my channel.
Just because, here are some pics of my baby:
