Tuesday, March 22, 2011 - The Eye Opener

So this morning I had a doctor's appointment and I WAS really excited about it.  I'm 25.5 weeks and it was time to do the dreaded glucose screening test, BUT I was going to get to hear my sweet girl's heartbeat so that made it better.  I FAILED the glucose screening.  My blood sugar was 171!!!!  Talk about scary.  So I'm going back on Thursday morning to do the 3-hour Glucose Test.  I am not excited about it and now that I've had time to reflect on the test and my diet I'm really worried.  I'm not worried about not getting to enjoy yummy foods for the rest of my pregnancy.  I'm not worried about learning the diabetic exchange system.  Or even the fact that regulating my diet might not work and I might have to take shots for the rest of the pregnancy.  I'm worried about my baby girl and how hard it might be to find the right combination of things to regulate my blood glucose.  My faulty blood glucose can really mess things up for her...talk about Mommy-guilt at its fullest.  Check out this link if you just want an overview of possible complications  http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/gestational-diabetes/DS00316/DSECTION=complications   This is one of those things that is completely out of my control at the moment and that scares me.  I do know that it is very common for women to have this condition during pregnancy, doctors have no idea what actually causes it, and every case that I've ever known has been easily controlled through diet.  My doctor's advice...eat normally (seriously if he read my food diary I can't say he would advise that) until Wednesday night, fast overnight, be here at 8 am to start the 3-hour test.  Personally I think the MCAT (medical school entrance exam) would be less intimidating at the moment.  So just think about me on Thursday morning.  I'll be hanging out in the doctor's office waiting room hoping/praying for a negative test.   Either way it goes expect some large dietary changes in the coming weeks..I think this was the boost of fear motivation that I needed to clean up my act.     

Monday, March 21, 2011

Not too bad for a Monday..especially with such a nutritionally horrible weekend.  Around lunch time I strolled around campus with a coworker interviewing students about spring break.  It made me insanely jealous because I NEVER went anywhere for Spring Break.  I was always too broke and would take the opportunity to work the full week.  I should have taken that as a sign of what was coming in my future.  My poor money management skills in my 20s are killing me in my 30s.  Student loans and bad car deals are my biggest pain in the tail.  I DID manage to get rid of every credit card bill I had a few months ago.  I currently am taking the stance that I do not believe in credit cards and if I can't buy it with cash or my debit card then I obviously can't afford it/don't need it.  That being said I also find myself becoming increasingly pickier about my purchases.  I don't mind paying for clothes or shoes that I know I can wear for more than a year.  FYI you can't wear maternity clothes very long and I consider them to be a HUGE RIP-OFF but that's a rant for another day.  Also for another day..budgeting is way harder than it looks and sometimes it really sucks to be a grown-up. 

March 19-20, 2011...OH THE SHAME

I'm not even sure where to start.  I did mention that this past weekend was one of the most relaxing I've had in a long time.  I never left the town I live in..I barely even left the house.  On Saturday night we went over to our couple friend's house for "A Fryin" as hubby kept calling it.  It was all planned out and we KNEW that we were only eating fried foods that night.  IT WAS DELICIOUS! My only contribution to the meal were the lemon cupcakes.  I have a Babycakes Cupcake Maker those literally took about a half hour even with the prep time.  I spent the rest of the night sitting on my tail, sipping on water with lemon, watching the boys do all the cooking.  :)

On Sunday the hubby and I decided that we needed to have something healthier for breakfast since we had eaten so badly the night before.  We had oatmeal and then ate leftover for lunch...yeah talk about not doing much to help ourselves out.  We spent the rest of the day doing little things around the house, napping and watching tv.  Weirdly somehow I managed to find the perfect combination for my poor swelling ankles.  By the end of the day they were almost the pre-pregnancy ankles that I remembered.  So as badly as I ate all weekend I can say that I started off my work week completely relaxed and rested.  I'm ashamed of the way I ate but actually proud of finding the relaxation balance that I was lacking. 

Friday, March 18, 2011

I took off Friday afternoon and went home to start my weekend early.  It was the beginning of one of the most relaxing weekends I've had in a long time.  :)

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Since I'm posting this so late I'm not even going to bother to comment yet. 

Oh the shame...

I have not abandoned my blog..I just didn't have time to post the entire weekend today.  It will be up tomorrow.  Let me just say that the weekend was shameful enough that I considered not posting it.  Then I thought "No, this is what I'm here for."  So all the awful food diary details will show up tomorrow at some point.  I have a dr appt in the morning...gonna hear my baby girl's heartbeat again :) and have the yucky glucose test.  Hoping, wishing, and praying that it comes out normal and I can just continue my pregnancy in piece. 

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Click image to view in a new link.

The journey to anything in life starts with a single step and unfortunately that's often the hardest step to take.  Starting and maintaining this blog is the first step for me in admitting that my behavior is unacceptable.  I started off my day pretty well and was actually very proud of it until about 3:30 when a coworker mentioned this would be a perfect afternoon to go out and get ice cream.  I cannot blame my friend because it IS A PERFECT day for ice cream...but aren't they all?  If you haven't noticed I have no problem justifying anything as a good reason to consume the foods that I love most.  Sometimes its a treat for a good deed, sometimes a bad day, sometimes its just because the sun is shining, or my favorite lately has been that the baby wants <insert food of choice here>...yeah.  My coworker has no idea I'm keeping this food diary or blog. She would be extremely supportive if I fessed up and told her about it.  I had every opportunity to say no and eat my beautifully planned, nutritious snack.  I even opened the refrigerator and had it in my hand when she suggested it.  Sadly, I pulled the fridge door open again and happily declared that I would just eat if for breakfast in the morning!  And off we went and the ice cream was FABULOUS and PERFECT until I came in an typed it into my food diary.  Then the big flashing MISTAKE!! DANGER!! YOU MORON!!  signs started flashing in my mind.  So here I am wanting to take a day of rest from my exercise and now I can't because I HAD to have that ice cream.  I was just going to go home, cook a little dinner for myself (hubby is working late) and work on some home projects that have been bugging me.  Don't get me wrong..I do enjoy my new found favorite swimming exercises.  But now I've backed myself into the "I have to do it corner today" and that's not the corner I wanted to stand in this afternoon.  I should also say that I'm not against consuming my favorite treats in moderation. In this case I should have planned a little better knowing that I wanted to use today as an exercise break.      


Diet Observation:  Good job up until the afternoon snack and then good recovery with dinner...and seriously I still stayed under the calorie goal even with the mac and cheese..SHOCKING! Committing to some sort of activity daily DOES make me feel better and I've already noticed a pretty significant increase in my energy level at the end of the day.  Unfortunately, I did notice that all the ice cream I ate made me sluggish all the way through my workout.  I found myself watching the clock and and not working as hard at times. Tomorrow I'll be focusing on balancing out my nutrient levels as they are pretty skewed right now.  Fat, sugar and sodium are obviously problem areas for me, and yes I know those are the very ingredients that make food taste so delectable.  I don't want to remove them from my diet.  I just want to consume manageable amounts.  I mean seriously this really isn't about me anymore..my baby girl is getting all this stuff too.     

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Click image to view food diary in a new link.  

I went home and pondered a healthy food relationship for my child and what I can do about that. My only conclusion is that I must a healthy relationship with food myself before I can teach her anything. So what's my plan? I think I'm off to a good start with my tracking on livestrong.com and with the public humiliation that I'm putting myself through posting my food diary daily. Seriously tarring and feathering myself and marching through the middle of town might be less humiliating than admitting to anyone exactly how horrendous my diet really is. But just like everything else in life this is about making choices. I can choose to remain ignorant about the damage I'm doing to my child, and ultimately to myself, with such unhealthy eating habits. Or I can choose to educate myself, hold myself accountable, make a workable plan and move forward. I'm choosing the latter. I don't want to spend her entire life on a diet and having her listen to me complain about fighting what seems like a losing battle. She's going to have problems, everyone does, and I sincerely hope that her questions about own her self-worth and self-esteem are not tied very closely to her weight. I don't want to be the primary example/source of her conflict with food and weight. Secretly I hope she has her Daddy's long legs and super-fast metabolism and that she never fights this battle.

Diet Observation: I'm actually kind of proud of my food diary today. It looks remarkably better than the previous ones. I planned my breakfast. I knew that I was going to lunch at the sushi bar today and planned accordingly. A coworker mentioned something about an omelet during lunch and BAM! my dinner plan was born. I also added an extra half hour of swimming today since I felt so amazing yesterday. I consider it a bonus that swimming burns just over 10 calories per minute. It might also appear that I didn't eat enough today because I'm so far under my allotted calories..I never felt deprived. I ate when I was hungry, drank lots of water in between, and stopped eating when I was satisfied. Plus considering I've eaten almost 3,000 calories a day for the past few days I'm thinking that baby girl and I are just fine. Now if I can just manage to get my sodium under control then I might actually be on the verge of a workable plan.

Diet trick I'm trying: Measurements..I'm trying to get into the habit of measuring my food. I think a lot of people completely underestimate the amount of food they eat..I know I do. When I set up my food diary for Sunday I pulled out my trusty digital food scale set the plate on it and proceeded to load it up with the recommended 2 oz serving. OMG! Have you ever seen a 2 oz serving of spaghetti? Its TINY. I'm very sure that it could efficiently feed a small child but I don't know an adult who could possibly feel satiated after consuming that amount of spaghetti. So I loaded my plate with the serving I wanted and it was a whole whopping 6 oz. Honestly, I was being modest with those 6 oz. All that being said, I'm huge fan of measuring food portions that I'm unsure about. These are my best weight loss tools (digital food scale, measuring spoons, measuring cups and my trusty water bottle), aside from my livestrong.com food diary.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Its Spring Break here at the university, meaning that its quiet, most of the staff has taken off and our usually overcrowded parking lot is almost empty. As a staff member I LOVE school breaks, even though I usually still have to be at work. In celebration I decided that I would eat that wonderful Butterfinger Sonic Blast that I've been dreaming about for 3 days. Of course, it and the cheese tots completely crashed any hope of a good dietary day. It was sure good while it lasted though. Obviously I'm going to have to do a little thing called 'planning' for the rest of the week to keep from having to post such embarrassing food diaries. Geez, I'm an adult why can't I manage to eat like one? The thing that I am proud of for today is that I did actually make time to go to the gym and swim for 30 minutes. I'll be repeating that tomorrow for a longer period of time. I REALLY enjoyed it.

Diet Observation: Its been weighing really heavy on my mind that my unborn child is also consuming all of this garbage. If she was sitting right next to me in her high chair I can't say that I would be feeding her a Lucky Charms for lunch, followed by a Sonic Blast and Cheese Tots covered in ketchup. I want my baby to eat and enjoy healthy foods. I'm embarrassed to say that as the sole provider of her nutrition, at the moment, I'm failing miserably. I might as well be putting her to bed with soda or sweet tea in her bottle. That also brings up the question, as a mom, how do you help foster a healthy relationship with food for your child?

Sunday, March 13, 2011

I actually got up and did housework, watched the hubby slave away with yard work (wow he was a busy guy!) and then had to work a mid-afternoon ball game. It was actually a nice relaxing Sunday, even with work in the middle. I came home cooked dinner, cleaned up and went to bed early. As excited as I am to meet my baby girl I'm not really ready to let go of my clean, quiet house just yet. I think I'm going to miss these easy Sundays, or maybe easy Sunday will take on an even better meaning..who knows?

Diet observation: OMG! What did I do this weekend? I feel like a college student who drank for 2 days and can't remember what she did or who she saw. Apparently I still think I weight 100 lbs and have my 18 yro metabolism.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

My sister and I have long been fans of having Saturday morning breakfast together. We usually go to either a local donut shop or a local bagel shop to sit, eat, drink coffee, and enjoy good conversation. Usually we go "rambling" around town afterwards and see too all the goodies the local shops are offering. We rarely buy anything but we always find neat things that would look amazing in our houses. This Saturday instead of rambling we opted to take her 2 dogs for a really long walk. She has a Lab and a Weimaraner that both LOVE to play. She lives close to the local college campus so we walked around campus and ended the journey at the on-campus lake. The dogs LOVED IT! We let them off their leashes to run, fetch and play in the lake. They were so excited and fun to watch. Jake, the Lab, jumped in the lake every time he thought about it and June refused. She has to be the prissiest dog I've ever met. Despite being a dog, she's not at all a fan of getting dirty. Anyhow the day was beautiful and perfect for a long walk and I can't wait to go again.

As I said in my Friday post, I worked baseball this weekend. I was supposed to work Saturday and Sunday too but something magical happened on Saturday night. We had too many people on the crew! Of course, that meant that someone needed to go home and I JUMPED at the chance. Let me preface this by saying that I do get paid extra money to work these games and that the crew is chosen from a pool of staff members who are voluntarily working and when staff members are unable fill the crew then student workers are the next option. So that being said, one of our lowly paid student workers was about to get the boot for the evening. I seriously wanted to go home so I ran up to the poor guy and asked if he wanted to work my position. I could see another staff member lurking close by so I HAD to jump in there FAST! And I won!! The student worker took me up on my offer and I got to go home and hang out with the hubby. Albeit, no extra money for me but I really wanted to spend some much needed time with the hubby. We only have 16 more weeks of a nice, quiet house to enjoy unless baby girl decides to come early.

Diet observation: hanging my head in shame..WOW is all I can say. I have no excuse and it sucks.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Friday I worked all day and then had to work at a baseball game that night. Working baseball for me basically means that I sit on my tail, doing light computer work and watching a computer monitor for 3-3.5 hours. The games are 2.5-3 hours but I have to be in my seat feeding the director content 30 minutes (sometimes earlier) before game time. I work on the video crew that runs everything on the big board (jumbotron as most call it) at an SEC University. The job sounds way cooler than it is and in my 5th year of doing it I can honestly say that the "new car smell" has officially worn off. While everyone else is enjoying the sunshine, atmosphere and choice adult beverages, the video crew is in a dark basement room watching TV monitors and communicating to the outside world via headset, without sunshine and adult beverages and don't get me started on the atmosphere. I'll nicely say that it is extremely stressful during certain parts of the year and during others it is actually not all that bad. I am not alone in this crew, at any given game there could be 10-20 of us plugging away together. During football season we're locked behind a gate that has bars very similar to the ones that barricade zoo animals into their cages. When you walk by you can see several of us standing outside the door to Control Room trying to look all snobby with our All Access badges silently wishing we were outside the fence enjoying the day like everyone else. Somedays I think we're just as bad as the zoo animals because I swear if the gate opened and we were given access to freedom then we would all run and take advantage of all the spoils that await.

Anyhow, the diet....can anyone guess why I've put on 25lbs in 24 weeks of pregnancy? Just wait until you see the rest of the gory details from this weekend. Let's just say that someone (ME!!) needs to learn some serious self control and I'm so not proud of it.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

So obviously my posts will have to be a day behind. I go to sleep with the chickens nightly so posting before bed is probably not going to work really well for me. Gotta take advantage of all the sleep I can before baby gets here in a few months. :)

Details you should know as far as my calorie consumption is concerned. I am only 4'10" and I started this pregnancy with about 20 lbs of extra weight. My husband and I are keeping a record of belly measurements and I'm also tracking my weight. We take measurements every Friday. I'm currently 24 weeks pregnant and I've gained 25 lbs already. Am I sure about the 25 lbs? Yes, I'm very sure because I've been weighing myself weekly and unfortunately neither my scale or my calculator are good at lies. Am I proud of them? Not at all. I have 16 weeks left until my due date and I'm 100% that I don't have much of a choice about adding to those 25 lbs but I would like to do is minimize the damage. I can't give up eating obviously but I can definitely make some better choices (real vegetables would be a good start). I'm also having quite a lot of trouble with swelling in my ankles and hands. There's not much mystery as to why that is happening when you view my sodium consumption and the fact that I did absolutely no exercise yesterday. :( I wish I could say yesterday was a fluke but its probably a lot more accurate than I'd like to ever admit.

To view my food diary just right click on the image to the left and open it in a new link. I'm using screen captures from my www.livestrong.com food diary. I highly recommend their free MyPlate tracker. They have a pretty extensive data base, options to add your own recipes, and I really dig the simplicity of the layout. They also have mobile applications for those of us who need it on the go.

Introducing...ME

In an effort to hold myself accountable for all the weight I'm gaining in pregnancy and that I WILL LOSE after pregnancy. You read correctly, I WILL LOSE this weight. I thought it might be best to start a blog that I update daily with all things concerning my weight gain and subsequent loss. I chose the name "Hey Momma! Whatcha Eating?" from my own childhood. I grew up the oldest of four children (with 23 first cousins but that's a different story) and it seemed like my poor momma was never able to eat or drink anything without one of us drooling in it. I'm still not 100% sure she gets to completely eat a warm meal all by herself.

Who am I? My name is Sara, I'm 32 and happily married with my first child on the way. I work as a graphic designer at a university in the south. I wish I could say that I love my job but that's a lie. I've gained somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 lbs after I graduated and found myself chained to a desk chair. I personally think I would be happier in a job that required me to be on the move constantly, but of course the grass is always greener, right? If I continue the path I'm currently on then there is absolutely no way this baby weight is going to leave my body. I'm at work sitting on my butt from 8am-5pm with a 1 hour lunch break in the middle. Right now walking to the bathroom is absolutely my most frequent exercise of each day. Lucky for me pregnant ladies ALWAYS have to go. So anyway, this is who I am and why I'm here. Consider this my acknowledgement/awareness of how unhappy I'm going to be once I cannot blame this extra weight on my sweet growing baby.