Operation Lose The Baby Weight

This is going to be a difficult post for me. I've decided I'm just going to be completely transparent about my weight loss journey. The absolute hardest part of pregnancy for me was the weight gain. I felt so frustrated that I just watched the pounds climb on. To understand why it was so hard for me let me go back about 10 years. In high school I never really worried about my weight. I ate whatever mom fixed for dinner, I never worried about healthy meals & I was very active in tennis & cheerleading. While I wasn't the skinniest girl in high school I was happy with my body & never had to worry about what I ate. Fast forward to college. My first year  the freshman 15 was seriously no joke at all. I gained it all in the first semester. I knew I was gaining weight but it wasn't until someone commented on my "cankles" that I became really concerned and realized I needed to do something. Did I have cankles? Not at all! Was I heavier than I should have been, yes probably. So at 133 pounds I joined weight watchers. In less than a year I had lost 24 pounds. I felt fantastic & was the skinniest I had remembered being ever. After graduating college I began to work for weight watchers as a leader. I absolutely loved it! It helped to keep me accountable & helping people lose weight & get healthier  made me feel so good! I left my job at weight watchers when Blake & I decided we wanted to get married so I could have time for him but still continued the program.

Over the years my weight would go up & down but the one constant I realized was that the cankles comment was not only unnecessary it set me on a life long  journey of being concerned about my weight & how others viewed me. My weight & physical appearance became my biggest complex I compared myself to others daily & I was very hard on myself.

Before our wedding I decided I wanted to do p90x3 just to say I completed it. I tried so hard to do the nutrition plan but I was just too tempted by sweets so I would always go back to weight watchers. It was the best for me because it allowed you freedom to indulge. I also purchased the 21 day fix extreme program from beach body. I did several rounds of workouts but again failed at the nutrition aspect. I wanted to bad to just eat clean but couldn't so resorted to what worked from me.
Getting married I was in good shape but I was still about 10 pounds away from my goal weight. I had hoped to get to goal weight by the time we got pregnant. I even had started going to my weight watcher meetings the week we arrived home. We found out after my first meeting that we were pregnant. We were overjoyed! But the first thought was my fear of weight gain. The first trimester I felt awful! I was in survival mode, eat to not throw up. Of course it wasn't good food, it was goldfish & crackers & salsa & Mexican food. Each day I watched my weight climb (yes I'm a daily weigher like I tell everyone else not to be) around the 2nd trimester my dr told me to stop weighing at home. The weight gain was literally causing huge crying meltdowns. I didn't feel pregnant I felt fat & the fact that people weren't worried about telling me how big I was getting didn't help. So I only weighed at dr. appointments. After Thanksgiving I remember I gained 9 pounds and was mortified. After that appointment I stopped indulging in foods I didn't even crave & stopped looking at the scale. At my appointments I would step on backward & Blake would tell me if it was good or bad. (Bad being 3-5 pounds). I made the decision as long as I didn't make it past 200 pounds I would just give myself grace. That was easier said than done. As my body swelled my confidence dwindled. My husband was literally my rock letting my cry & just holding me & building me up. I felt strong from my workouts & knew I was supposed to gain weight while pregnant but it was a hard thing to swallow & accept. At my final dr appointment I weight 185 & had gained 45 pounds. Of course you can guess there were TEARS! As I look back now I wish I would have not worried about the weight so much & enjoyed pregnancy more. But at that point I didn't know how I was going to lose it & I felt so uncomfortable in my body. I felt like I was comparing myself to the weight gain of all of my pregnant friends which was so wrong.

While pregnant I would explain that I was going to start back with Beach Body & clean eating. A few people told me the weight would come right off but mostly all I heard was how difficult it was to lose baby weight & how impossible it was to work out. I had been talking to Annie, a beach body coach for a while & decided to take the plunge & sign up as a Beach Body coach. I told her if she didn't hear from me by May to come seeking me out.

So here we are after pregnancy. Left with a pregnant looking body minus a baby & you know what I was still hungry. I was eating just to survive because I was too tired to care. I was still craving things but now it was cheeseburgers & twix candy bars. I could inhale some twix. I knew breastfeeding helped but deep down I was doing more damage but good with my diet. My sisters had said to wait to weigh for a while & I was glad I did. I couldn't take that stress the first few weeks of having a baby. After 4 weeks I decided I couldn't prolong it any longer. I had to step on the scale or I was going to continue to eat into oblivion. 165 was what the scale read. I was down 20 pounds, not too bad. After that I tried to eat right but just struggled. We discovered Mason's acid reflux & my dr told me to refrain from anything that had tomato products in it. We then discovered he had a dairy allergy so I then had to omit all foods containing fresh dairy. Mason was still having a hard time when I would eat foods that contained cooked dairy products so anything containing any trace of dairy, milk, soy or whey protein was omitted from my diet. Needless to say my food was pretty bland. I felt like I was starting to eat healthier so I was going to give the clean eating 21 day fix food plan a shot. My start date was going to be on May 9th. I had full support from Blake which made it so much easier! The day before Blake & I prepared all of our veggies, meats, fruits & healthy snacks and got the packaged up for each day.

So on May 9th I started the 21 Day Fix Extreme program. Now is a good time to mention that I am the type of person that if you tell me something is too hard or I can't do it I am going to do everything in my power to prove that I can. So what was fueling me wasn't just my want to lose baby weight but the drive to prove to everyone that I was strong enough, that I could do it. I wasn't sure how it was going to go but I was ready to give it a shot & I had more motivation than I ever had before. The eating was the part I always struggled with the most but this time I was so surprised that it wasn't a challenge. I think it was the fact that anything I really wanted to cheat with (pizza, ice cream, mexican food, fries with ketchup) I couldn't because it would put Mason in severe pain. The workouts were more of a struggle than the food. Not only was a more out of shape then the last time I started, but working out with a baby is very hard. However, I wasn't going to let it become impossible.  Some days Mason would nap my whole workout, others he would be awake but entertained & others it would take 1-2 hours to complete a 30 minute workout. But I wasn't going to let that stop me. Remember that proving people wrong part? Every time I was tired or it was hard or I stopped to rock Mason I would tell myself prove them wrong!
The first weekend of the program Blake's dad came for a visit. That was hard as they indulged several times in BBQ, desserts, McDonald's breakfasts. But I wasn't going to give in. I felt strong and empowered in my nutrition plan. By the end of week 1 I had lost 5.4 pounds and 7.5 inches.
Week 2 was a little bit of a struggle because we were working late nights to pack up my classroom but I kept pushing through. By the end of week 2 I had lost 7.1 pounds and 15.5 inches.
Week 3 was definitely the hardest. Blake's mom & sister came to visit. There was pizza, cupcakes, southern fried home cooking, candy, chips. I was so tempted the entire weekend. However, this was my last week & I wanted desperately to see results. I was so determined. I wanted to lose 10 pounds by the end of round 1.
At the end of 21 days it was time to take my weight, measurements & after pictures. I didn't reach my 10 pound goal & I was disappointed but had to remind myself not to put too much stock in the scale. At the end of 21 days of clean eating with no cheats I had lost 9 pounds & 20.75 inches. While I was thrilled with the statistics, I was even more excited about my pictures. No, I'm not where I want to be yet, I have a personal goal to lose 25-30 more pounds but I am excited about how far I've come. I'm so thankful for the support of my wonderful husband, I couldn't stay on this clean eating plan without his help prepping and staying on track. I also am so thankful that I found Beach Body & my coach Annie. Her encouragement & the encouragement of our challenge group has been so helpful. I'm excited to be learning under her & can't wait to start challenge groups of my own. If anyone reading this is interested in doing a challenge group with me or starting their own journey feel free to message me.

The left side is on May 9th & the right side in on May 30th