I am 3 months into new motherhood and its fabulous. My child refuses to sleep during the day (she is anti-nap) but she does sleep pretty well at night. Even with her awesome nighttime sleeping skills I still find myself insanely tired which, of course, leaves me pointing fingers at my post-pregnancy trucker food diet. I have a bit of an ice cream, snack cakes, soft drink, candy you know everything-I-couldn't-eat-with-gestational-diabetes kind of addiction going on. It’s really a slippery slope for me as I consider myself a complete sugar addict. If I can get the white stuff out of my diet I believe I would be an all-around better and happier person. Getting sugar out of my diet is a long-term goal but I'm focused on my short-term goal at the moment, which is finding balance between motherhood, full-time work, healthy eating along with exercise and completely losing all of my baby weight. I'm only 6 lbs away!!
One thing I feel I am one definitely doing right is breastfeeding. I do not believe that you are killing your child by not breastfeeding, as I know PLENTY of perfectly healthy formula-fed children. But I am still extremely proud of my choice and ability to exactly what my body is designed to do. I stick my chest out like a peacock when people ask what kind of formula I use and I tell them "none, we are a breastfeeding family." Anyhow one of the benefits, for mom, is that breastfeeding burns an obnoxious amount of calories. Which also plants the idea in mom's head that she can eat whatever she wants and still lose weight. So I bought into all that crap and ate like a trucker while I was watching the numbers wind down on my scale and now I'm at a plateau. I'm watching my weight fluctuate between a loss and a gain. Apparently I've used up all my breastfeeding weight loss voodoo and its time to work on the diet...oh and I should probably exercise too. Unfortunately rocking my baby and staring at her little sleeping face doesn't burn enough calories to cancel out all the junk food that I've been snacking on. My final pregnancy weight was 159, my current weight is 130.8 and fluctuates between 129-132…mostly on the 132 side. My goal is **106-100lbs. All that being said, I decided to give Weight Watchers Online a try. I was drawn to their plan because it offers support for breastfeeding mothers, while other sites do not. Losing baby weight is tricky as a breastfeeding mom because it can affect your supply. I've been told that I need to keep an extra 6-10 lbs while I'm feeding. And every book/web site I've read says the same thing but what if I already had 20 I needed/wanted to lose? Do I keep those too? I'm not planning on it. Another breastfeeding friend of mine has been following the Weight Watchers plan with any negative effects to her milk supply so it sounded perfect. Weight Watchers accounts for the extra calories that I need to consume when they calculate my points. That being said I get an OBNOXIOUS amount of points everyday. I've only been on it for a week and haven't seen a consistent weight loss number yet. I weigh myself on Monday (have to keep myself in check all weekend) and I log my food everyday. So far I've managed to blow my points on quite a few days by eating like a trucker. As I say I am and will always be a work in progress. My goal for this week is to make a menu for the week and actually start planning. So what's momma eating this week? I don't know because I haven't bothered to plan anything out. I just eat when I'm hungry and that's obviously not going to work.
**Remember I am less than 5 feet tall so this is healthy for me…feel free to plug my numbers into any BMI calculator online that you can find. I'm 4'10" and 32 years old. 117-86lbs (depending on which calculator you are using) is considered healthy for me…I'm aiming to be in the middle of that range.
